Rita Ora shell-shocked as husband unmasked in Masked Singer shock semi-final twist
Rita Ora was left shell-shocked during the live semi-final of The Masked Singer US as she was surprised with a very familiar face during a shock unmasking.
Last night, Coral, Boogie Woogie, Mad Scientist and Pearl were fighting it out for a spot in the live final. Coral or Boogie Woogie were left in the firing line as they waited to see which one wouldn't make it to the final - but they were joined by a new character, Lucky Duck - Rita's husband Taika Waititi.
"I've been breaking into this competition all season long and I've decided to dust off this old lucky bell," Lucky Duck announced.
"Because tonight, both of you…are safe! You are both going to the finale. Neither of you are getting unmasked tonight, so head backstage. You have a finale to prepare for," he said.
In fact, it was Lucky Duck who would be unmasked. Getting into the competition, Lucky Duck shared a few clues about himself, but the judges were left flabbergasted. "I've been bringing luck since the beginning, and during my time here, I've left no stone unturned. But one mystery still remains: Who am I?"
'As good as I am, this detective-ing thing is only a hobby. I spend most of my time on massive movie sets. Yes, even bigger than The Hangover. There's not an Oscar I don't know," he said, as Rita exclaimed: "I need to know who this is, it's completely killing me!"
Lucky Duck then impressed viewers with a choreographed dance to Queen's I Want to Break Free surrounded by backup dancers. The judges were desperate for the character to be unmasked - and Rita was given the shock of her life when the character was revealed to be her husband Taika Waititi.
The Anywhere singer then went to hug her husband on stage, as he joked the only way he would get to see her was by appearing on the show.
Taika and Rita tied the knot in a secret ceremony in LA in 2022. They planned the nuptials in just two weeks after Rita popped the question to the dad-of-two while on holiday in Palm Springs a few weeks earlier.
Speaking of their big day, the happy couple revealed they kept the numbers small. 'There were about eight people there—just close friends and family, and parents on Zoom,' Hollywood film director Taika told Vogue magazine.
He added: 'My daughters were there, and they made everything really fun and easy: I think just because we didn't have the pressure of having caterers and all of these things, you know, people turning up late, and all of the different moving parts.'
"I felt really peaceful actually, it was almost like another day. We just all dressed up and got married," Rita concluded.
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The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘It was a buddy movie – and then they kissed': Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi on My Beautiful Laundrette at 40
It is a sweltering summer afternoon and I'm blowing bubbles over the heads of Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi while they have their pictures taken in a sun-dappled corner of the latter's garden. Perched in front of them as they sit side by side – Kureishi, who has been tetraplegic since breaking his neck in a fall in 2022, is in a wheelchair – is a silver cake made to look like a washing machine, commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of their witty, raunchy comedy-drama My Beautiful Laundrette. Some of the bubbles land on the cake's surface, causing everyone present to make a mental note to skip the icing, while others burst on the brim of Frears's hat or drift into Kureishi's eyes. It is not perhaps the most dignified look for an esteemed duo celebrating an enduring Oscar-nominated gem. Don't think they haven't noticed, either. As the bubbles pop around them, Kureishi upbraids the photographer for trampling on his garden – 'Mind my flowers!' – while Frears grumbles: 'I could be watching the cricket.' Get them on to the subject of the film, though, and an aura of pride soon prevails. No wonder. My Beautiful Laundrette, which revolves around a run-down dive transformed into 'a jewel in the jacksie of south London' by an Anglo-Pakistani entrepreneur and his lover, did many things: it distilled and critiqued an entire political movement (Thatcherism), portrayed gay desire in unfashionably relaxed terms, and audaciously blended social realism with fable-like magic and cinematic grandeur. 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He was kind of a grifter. He took me around these launderettes he owned in the hope that I would run them for him. They were awful fucking places; people were shooting up in there. So I thought I'd write about a bloke running a launderette. Then I thought: 'Well, he needs a friend.' It could be a buddy movie, like The Sting. But I couldn't get a hold on it. Then, as I was writing, they kissed – and suddenly everything seemed more purposeful. Now it was a love story as well as a story about a bloke going into business.' The tension between Omar and Johnny, his formerly racist pal-turned-lover, was drawn from Kureishi's own experience of growing up in south London. 'Lots of my friends had become skinheads. My best friend turned up at my house one day with cropped hair, boots, Ben Sherman shirt, all the gear. My dad nearly had a heart attack. He'd spent a lot of time trying not to be beaten up by skinheads. It was terrifying to be a Pakistani in south London in the 1970s.' Omar's uncle, exuberantly played by Saeed Jaffrey, was similarly lifted from life. 'He was based on a friend of my father's: a good-time boy who had a white mistress.' That lover was played in the film by Shirley Anne Field, star of the kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. 'She was a woman of such grace and elegance,' sighs Kureishi. 'Dan and I would interrogate her all the time: 'Who's the most famous person you've slept with?' She'd slept with President Kennedy. And George Harrison!' He still sounds amazed. When Frears came on board, he made some invaluable suggestions. 'Stephen told me: 'Make it dirty,'' says Kureishi. 'That's a great note. Writing about race had been quite uptight and po-faced. You saw Pakistanis or Indians as a victimised group. And here you had these entrepreneurial, quite violent Godfather-like figures. He also kept telling me to make it like a western.' Frears looks surprised: 'Did I?' Kureishi replies: 'Yeah. I never knew what that meant.' 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Dan didn't even have a suitcase, just a toothbrush. Every night, he'd wash his underwear and his socks in the sink and put them on again the next day.' Blown up to 35mm, this low-budget TV film became a magnet for rave reviews here and in the US (the New Yorker's Pauline Kael called it 'startlingly fresh'), bagged Kureishi an Oscar nomination and helped reinvigorate Frears's movie career, paving the way for later hits including Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters and The Queen. Neither of them has seen it recently. 'I don't watch my old films,' Frears says with a grimace. 'You either sit there thinking: 'I should have done that better.' Or else: 'That's rather good. Why can't I do that any more?'' 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Metro
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Scotsman
13 hours ago
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