
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.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


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. It launched a writer (Kureishi), a production company (Working Title, later the home of Richard Curtis), a prestigious composer (Hans Zimmer) and, most strikingly, one of the greatest of all actors: Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays Johnny, the ex-National Front thug teaming up (and copping off) with his former schoolmate Omar (Gordon Warnecke). Or 'Omo' as Johnny teasingly calls him even as he licks his neck in public or they douse one another in champagne. It is well known that Gary Oldman and Tim Roth were also in the running to play Johnny. Frears adds an unlikelier name to the mix. 'Kenneth Branagh came to see me,' says the 84-year-old film-maker. 'Half a second and you knew: 'Well, he's not right.' But good for him for wanting to do it.' The leading candidate seemed clear in Frears's mind, and not only because Day-Lewis threatened to break his legs if he didn't cast him. 'All the girls said: 'You want Dan.' He was top of the crumpet list at the Royal Court.' On screen, he is magnetically minimalist. 'Dan loved Clint Eastwood,' Kureishi points out. 'He loved how still Clint was. You can see the influence: Dan doesn't move very much.' Frears detected the echo of an even older star. 'I remember him standing by the lamppost under the bridge in the scene where he and Omar meet again, and I thought: 'Ah, I see. You want to play it like Marlene Dietrich.'' Kureishi, now 70, was already established as a young playwright before he wrote the film. Not that his father was impressed. 'He hadn't come to this country to see his son doing little plays above pubs,' he says in between sips of kefir. 'He thought I'd never make a living as a writer, so I really wanted to get moving.' Frears once likened reading My Beautiful Laundrette to 'finding a new continent'. In writing it, Kureishi combined scraps of autobiography with cinematic tropes. 'My dad had got me involved with a family friend called Uncle Adi, who ran garages and owned properties. 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.' There are visual touches that suggest the genre: a Butch Cassidy-esque bicycle ride, a Searchers-style final camera set-up peering through a doorway, not to mention a magnificent crane shot that hoists us from the back of the launderette and over its roof. 'I think what Stephen meant is that it's about two gangs getting ready to fight. The Pakistani group and the white thugs. There's something coming down the line.' His other note to Kureishi was that the film should have a happy ending. Why? 'We'd asked people to invest so much in these characters,' says Frears. 'And a sad ending is quite easy in an odd sort of way. This one's only happy in the last 10 seconds.' Kureishi agrees: 'Yeah. But you leave the cinema in a cheerful mood.' It was a happy ending for the film-makers, too. Frears recalls one reviewer observing that while Kureishi might not be able to spell, he could certainly write. That reminds me: the story goes that Kureishi deliberately misspelt the title as an indictment of his own education. But he scotches that rumour. 'I'm from Bromley,' he says. 'I thought that was how you spelled it.' If the film was a skyrocket for its writer, it heralded a new chapter for Frears. He had recently made his second film for cinema – the stylish, ruminative thriller The Hit starring Roth, John Hurt and Terence Stamp – 13 years after his debut, Gumshoe. Ironically, My Beautiful Laundrette, which was shot on 16mm for just £600,000, was only intended to be screened on Channel 4. But a rapturous premiere at the Edinburgh film festival, accompanied by acclaim from critics including the Guardian's Derek Malcolm, made a cinema release the only possible launchpad. Kureishi recalls that trip with fondness. 'I was in Edinburgh with Tim Bevan [of Working Title] and Dan, and we all slept in the same room. I made sure I got the bed, and the others were on the floor. 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?'' I assure them that the picture looks better than ever, whether it's the visual panache of Oliver Stapleton's cinematography or the enchanting subtlety of Warnecke's performance, which was rather overshadowed by Day-Lewis at the time but can now be seen to chart delicately Omar's gradual blossoming. It goes without saying that My Beautiful Laundrette was ahead of its time, especially in its blase approach to queerness. When the picture was released in the UK at the end of 1985, homophobia was becoming more virulent and widespread in the media as cases of Aids escalated. The Conservative government's section 28 legislation, outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality by local authorities, was just over two years away. The timing of the film's re-emergence today is not lost on its author. 'It's so hard to be gay now,' says Kureishi. 'There's all this hostility toward LGBT people, so it feels important that the film is out there again in this heavily politicised world where being gay or trans is constantly objectified. It's a horrible time.' Interviewed in 1986 by Film Comment magazine, however, Kureishi dismissed the idea of it as a 'gay film', and derided the whole concept of categories. 'There's no such thing as a gay or black sensibility,' he said then. How does he feel today? 'I still don't want to be put in a category. I didn't like it when people called me a 'writer of colour' because I'm more than that.' The film, too, is multilayered. 'It's about class, Thatcherism, the Britain that was emerging from the new entrepreneurial culture. I didn't want it to be restricted by race or sexuality, and that hasn't changed.' I wonder if it rankles, then, that My Beautiful Laundrette was voted the seventh best LGBTQ+ film of all time in a 2016 BFI poll. And it does – though not for the reason I had anticipated. 'What was above it?' demands Frears in a huff. 'Why didn't it win?' Still, both men are thrilled that the film was embraced by queer audiences. 'If Stephen and I have done anything to make more people gay, we'd be rather proud of that.' My Beautiful Laundrette is in cinemas from 1 August. Frears, Kureishi and Warnecke will take part in a Q&A following a screening on 25 July at the Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol


Metro
12 hours ago
- Metro
Nicole Kidman could flee Trump's US after applying for residency in Europe
Nicole Kidman could be swapping US soil for the sun of Portugal after applying for residency in the country. The Babygirl actor, 58, submitted her paperwork to the country's immigration agency earlier this week, according to local media outlet SIC Notícias. The Australian icon, who was seen stepping out of a private jet in Cascais – a wealthy seaside enclave just outside of Lisbon – is reportedly browsing for a lavish new pad. The Oscar-winner is said to be eyeing up a property at the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club, a luxury development about 130km south of Lisbon, which is known as a favourite among the Hollywood elite. George Clooney and Paris Hilton enjoy spending time here, and it is also a base for Princess Eugenie. Husband Keith Urban was reportedly not mentioned in the documents. The New York Post reports that the Blue Ain't Your Colour singer was unable to break away from touring for the trip. 'Keith was unable to be in Portugal for this appointment as he is currently on tour in the US, and it is mandatory for applicants to be physically present to apply for the visa,' The Post reported. 'He is scheduled to submit his application at a later date that works with his tour schedule.' The Portugal Golden Visa program allows investors to obtain residency through real estate investment. Kidman and Urban already own a home in Lisbon. Kidman and Urban have multiple properties across the US and Australia, with the Holland actor spending much of her time in the US due to work. They wouldn't be the first stars to leave the US since Trump's presidency began. Comedian Rosie O'Donnell moved from the US to Ireland, with Trump recently threatening to revoke her citizenship. Posting on Truth Social, he said the star was 'not in the best interests of our great country', adding: 'I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her.' O'Donnell posted a picture of Trump with his arm around Jeffrey Epstein on her Instagram in response. Addressing the President, she suggested she lives 'rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours' after 18 years of animosity between them. The comedian added: 'You are everything that is wrong with america – and I'm everything you hate about what's still right with it. More Trending 'You want to revoke my citizenship? go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan.' Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has fled the US for the UK at the end of 2024. Ellen and her wife, Portia de Rossi, made the leap and ditched their life in Montecito and set themselves up in the ultra-luxury English countryside, the Cotswolds. The Wrap reported that the duo told friends that Trump's coming to power was the 'primary motivation' and that they planned to 'never return' to the US. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: The Jonas Brothers reflect on creepy questions about their sex life aged 14 MORE: Denise Welch reveals why she's 'glad' to not be Taylor Swift's mother-in-law MORE: 70s jazz musician Chuck Mangione dies aged 84
.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1200%26auto%3Dwebp%26quality%3D75%26trim%3D0%2C270%2C0%2C50%26crop%3D&w=3840&q=100)

Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Scotsman
Under the Bridge cast: who is in cast
Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough lead the cast of Under the Bridge 📺 Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... True crime drama Under the Bridge is set to air on ITV. It features an Oscar-nominee in the cast. But who else is in the series? Under the Bridge is the latest import from across the Atlantic to arrive on ITV. The true-crime drama is based on the disappearance of teenager Reena Virk in the 1990s. It is described as 'one of the most shocking Canadian crimes' of that decade. The show was originally on Disney+ but is coming to ITVX and traditional linear TV as well. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But who is in the cast of the show and where do you know them from? Here's all you need to know: When is Under the Bridge on TV? Under the Bridge is coming to ITV | ITV/ Hulu/ Disney Plus ITV has picked up the show in a deal with Disney Plus. More shows from the streaming platform have become available on ITVX as well - find out more here. It is set to be broadcast on Friday nights starting today (July 25) on ITV1/ STV. Under the Bridge will start at 9pm and the second episode will follow at 10pm. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad How to watch the full series of Under the Bridge? If you don't want to wait until next week to find out what happens next in the story, the full boxset is already available to watch on ITVX/ STV Player. All of the episodes became available today (July 25). Under the Bridge is also available to watch on Disney Plus - if you have a subscription to that. Who is in the cast of Under the Bridge? The true-crime drama boasts quite the incredible cast - including a recent Oscar-nominee. The full list includes: Main Lily Gladstone - Cam Bentland Vritika Gupta - Reena Virk Chloe Guidry - Josephine Bell Javon "Wanna" Walton - Warren Glowatski Izzy G - Kelly Ellard Aiyana Goodfellow - Dusty Pace Ezra Faroque Khan - Manjit Virk Archie Panjabi - Suman Virk Riley Keough - Rebecca Godfrey Recurring Anoop Desai - Raj Masihajjar Matt Craven - Roy Bentland Daniel Diemer - Scott Bentland Jared Ager-Foster - Connor Fields Maya Da Costa - Maya Longette Arta Negahban - Laila Zahrani Isabella Leon - Samara Bailey Lily Gladstone was nominated for best actress at the 2024 Academy Awards for her role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. She also won a Golden Globe for the role. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Viewers may recognise Riley Keogh from Daisy Jones & the Six as well as Mad Max: Fury Road. She was also part of the cast for Magic Mike - and is the eldest grandchild of Elvis Presley. Archie Panjabi was most recently seen as The Rani in the 2025 series of Doctor Who on the BBC. She was also in Bend It Like Beckham back in the day - as well as other shows like The Good Wife and Life on Mars. If you love TV, check out our Screen Babble podcast to get the latest in TV and film.