Keith Urban 'didn't hang up' on racy interview question
The Australian country music star was speaking on Mix 102.3 on Tuesday when hosts Max Burford and Hayley Pearson introduced a game called Wall of Truth, and reports claimed after Keith abruptly ended the chat when asked about his wife Nicole Kidman's latest raunchy sex scenes.
"Keith did not hang up, period," a source told People. "He doesn't host his Zoom interviews. This is a complete nothing burger."
Pearson described the supposedly controversial chat show section that allegedly prompted Urban to hang up as a segment where they ask guests "a very tricky" and "deeply personal" question.
Burford began it by asking Urban: "When I was coming up with something to ask you, Keith Urban, if you happen to play this game, the first thing I thought of, with your beautiful wife Nicole Kidman being on so many great movies, TV shows all the time ... I watched a movie with her and Zac Efron recently, A Family Affair."
Urban replied politely: "Oh yeah, that's a good one."
Burford then asked: "And I thought, 'What does Keith Urban think when he sees his beautiful wife with beautiful younger men like Zac Efron having these beautiful love scenes on TV and radio?'"
Shortly after the question, Urban disappeared from the call.
Another voice on the show said he'd been "disconnected from Zoom".
Burton suggested: "I think his team hung up on us because they didn't want us to ask that question," adding Urban "doesn't like the personal stuff."
The source told People that Urban is a "very easygoing" interviewee and was not personally offended by the question. A representative for Urban declined to comment on the incident.
Nicole Kidman stars alongside Zac Efron in A Family Affair, released in June 2024.
In the film, the actor plays a widowed writer who begins dating Efron's character, a self-absorbed actor employing her daughter as a personal assistant.
Kidman told People last year: "It's really helpful when you're doing this sort of work together that you've already got a history together, because it's easy. You're not working to create a history. So I'm not like, 'Can I touch you?' I feel incredibly trusting of Zac."
Urban and Kidman married in 2006 and celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary in June.
Keith Urban has appeared to abruptly end a radio interview after being asked a personal question about his wife Nicole Kidman's intimate career moments, but sources say the singer did not hang up.
The Australian country music star was speaking on Mix 102.3 on Tuesday when hosts Max Burford and Hayley Pearson introduced a game called Wall of Truth, and reports claimed after Keith abruptly ended the chat when asked about his wife Nicole Kidman's latest raunchy sex scenes.
"Keith did not hang up, period," a source told People. "He doesn't host his Zoom interviews. This is a complete nothing burger."
Pearson described the supposedly controversial chat show section that allegedly prompted Urban to hang up as a segment where they ask guests "a very tricky" and "deeply personal" question.
Burford began it by asking Urban: "When I was coming up with something to ask you, Keith Urban, if you happen to play this game, the first thing I thought of, with your beautiful wife Nicole Kidman being on so many great movies, TV shows all the time ... I watched a movie with her and Zac Efron recently, A Family Affair."
Urban replied politely: "Oh yeah, that's a good one."
Burford then asked: "And I thought, 'What does Keith Urban think when he sees his beautiful wife with beautiful younger men like Zac Efron having these beautiful love scenes on TV and radio?'"
Shortly after the question, Urban disappeared from the call.
Another voice on the show said he'd been "disconnected from Zoom".
Burton suggested: "I think his team hung up on us because they didn't want us to ask that question," adding Urban "doesn't like the personal stuff."
The source told People that Urban is a "very easygoing" interviewee and was not personally offended by the question. A representative for Urban declined to comment on the incident.
Nicole Kidman stars alongside Zac Efron in A Family Affair, released in June 2024.
In the film, the actor plays a widowed writer who begins dating Efron's character, a self-absorbed actor employing her daughter as a personal assistant.
Kidman told People last year: "It's really helpful when you're doing this sort of work together that you've already got a history together, because it's easy. You're not working to create a history. So I'm not like, 'Can I touch you?' I feel incredibly trusting of Zac."
Urban and Kidman married in 2006 and celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary in June.
Keith Urban has appeared to abruptly end a radio interview after being asked a personal question about his wife Nicole Kidman's intimate career moments, but sources say the singer did not hang up.
The Australian country music star was speaking on Mix 102.3 on Tuesday when hosts Max Burford and Hayley Pearson introduced a game called Wall of Truth, and reports claimed after Keith abruptly ended the chat when asked about his wife Nicole Kidman's latest raunchy sex scenes.
"Keith did not hang up, period," a source told People. "He doesn't host his Zoom interviews. This is a complete nothing burger."
Pearson described the supposedly controversial chat show section that allegedly prompted Urban to hang up as a segment where they ask guests "a very tricky" and "deeply personal" question.
Burford began it by asking Urban: "When I was coming up with something to ask you, Keith Urban, if you happen to play this game, the first thing I thought of, with your beautiful wife Nicole Kidman being on so many great movies, TV shows all the time ... I watched a movie with her and Zac Efron recently, A Family Affair."
Urban replied politely: "Oh yeah, that's a good one."
Burford then asked: "And I thought, 'What does Keith Urban think when he sees his beautiful wife with beautiful younger men like Zac Efron having these beautiful love scenes on TV and radio?'"
Shortly after the question, Urban disappeared from the call.
Another voice on the show said he'd been "disconnected from Zoom".
Burton suggested: "I think his team hung up on us because they didn't want us to ask that question," adding Urban "doesn't like the personal stuff."
The source told People that Urban is a "very easygoing" interviewee and was not personally offended by the question. A representative for Urban declined to comment on the incident.
Nicole Kidman stars alongside Zac Efron in A Family Affair, released in June 2024.
In the film, the actor plays a widowed writer who begins dating Efron's character, a self-absorbed actor employing her daughter as a personal assistant.
Kidman told People last year: "It's really helpful when you're doing this sort of work together that you've already got a history together, because it's easy. You're not working to create a history. So I'm not like, 'Can I touch you?' I feel incredibly trusting of Zac."
Urban and Kidman married in 2006 and celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary in June.
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Sydney Morning Herald
28 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe
James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'
The Age
28 minutes ago
- The Age
What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe
James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'
Perth Now
an hour ago
- Perth Now
Kesha recalls 'terrifying' rise to stardom
Kesha found her sudden rise to stardom to be "terrifying". The 38-year-old pop star enjoyed her first major success in 2009, when she featured on Flo Rida's hit single Right Round, and Kesha has now admitted that she struggled to adjust to her new reality. The singer told People: "I went from being someone that sleeps in a sleeping bag at a punk house half of her life — everyone called it the Drunk Tank — and then a year and a half later I'm opening for Rihanna. "It was terrifying, but it was so fun." Kesha's family didn't have much money during her younger years, but she always found inspiration and hope in music. The pop star - whose new album is called Period - said: "When I was little, we were on food stamps. I remember thinking, 'What makes people really happy when they're having a hard time? Happy songs do that.'" Kesha has actually relied on music to help her through some of the dark times in her own life. And the singer is conscious that she now has the chance to uplift people who are going through similarly difficult times. She explained: "The interesting thing about being an artist is you can be the person going through hell and also the person that walks into the studio, like, 'I'm going to make sure you get through this. We're going to write a banger because it brings us joy.' It's almost like I'm picking myself up out of the sad moments I'm in. "I feel like it's my responsibility as an artist and a songwriter to just be honest about my human experience." Kesha has already been through lots of ups and downs in her career. However, the pop star no longer pays attention to her critics. The Blah Blah Blah hitmaker said: "I honestly don't care what people think about me. "I have nothing left to prove. I've already heard any horrible thing someone could hear about themselves: 'You're too fat, you're too old, you suck.' I'm immune to it, sadly. But maybe it's my superpower, because that is freedom. I'm just going to be myself. So party on, haters."
