Entertainment
CBS Will Pay for Use of ‘Linus and Lucy’ in Stephen Colbert Finale

CBS has struck a deal to pay Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Inc., an undisclosed amount after “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” used the famed Vince Guaraldi composition “Linus and Lucy” in the late night talk show’s May finale. As part of the licensing agreement, Lee Mendelson Film Prods. will donate those proceeds to Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen.
In a segment of the May 21 finale, Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine performed “Linus and Lucy” while Colbert discussed how Lee Mendelson Film Prods. has been enforcing its copyrights for the Guaraldi song catalog. On the episode, as Cato and the band performed the song, Colbert joked, “Oh no! I hope this doesn’t cost CBS any money!”
World Central Kitchen is a non-for-profit org that provides meals throughout the globe during various crises, including natural disasters and civil unrest. Separately, on the penultimate episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the show and Colbert had donated $2.5 million to WCK and Andrés.
Lee Mendelson Film Productions is the owner and steward of Guaraldi’s music, and has indeed been aggressively protecting its copyright as of late, filing a series of legal actions that cite an apparel accessories manufacturer, a video game producer, a collectibles auction house and the U.S. Department of the Interior for unauthorized use.
“The lawsuits are intended to halt a pattern of infringement that threatens to diminish the integrity of these protected works, the Guaraldi music legacy, and other cherished creative content vulnerable to misuse in the modern media landscape,” the company said in a press release.
In the case of “The Late Show,” Lee Mendelson Film Prods. chairman Jason Mendelson noted, “LMFP found the music’s use on The Late Show funny and entertaining, and is proud to support World Central Kitchen’s mission. A principal goal of our enforcement actions is to educate individuals, businesses, and government entities about the need to obtain written license agreements to use music in a commercial setting.”
Watch Colbert’s “Linus and Lucy” gag below:
Entertainment
Senator Ted Cruz Says Katy Perry’s Way Out of Justin Trudeau’s League
Senator Ted Cruz says former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s way out of his league when it comes to datingKaty Perry … and he says it takes one to know one.
Charlie got the Senator from Texas on Capitol Hill Tuesday and asked about the romance between Canada’s former top dog and the Queen of Camp … and you gotta hear Ted roar about the coupling.
Ted invokes an old school phrase — “outkicking your coverage” — to describe the disparity in this pairing … before noting he’s outkicking his coverage in his marriage to Heidi Cruz.
As for what Justin and Katy’s relationship might mean for relations between the U.S. and our neighbors to the north … well, Ted’s got another banger of an answer.
Justin and Katy started dating last summer, shortly after she split from longtime partner and baby daddy Orlando Bloom. Justin and his estranged wife, Sophie Grégoire, have been legally separated since 2023.
It seems Justin and Katy are still going strong … because photogs recently caught them packing on the PDA in Santa Barbara.
Entertainment
Sphere ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Experience Planned In Las Vegas
Days after Jim Dolan won a long sought-after chip with his New York Knicks, the billionaire mogul is ready to roll the dice on a major movie bet at his unique orb-shaped venue, The Sphere.
The next movie in the works for a reimagining at the 17,600-seat venue is an experiential take on Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult feature The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which has become a staple of community screenings and has been adapted multiple times for Broadway. At the Sphere, Rocky Horror will unspool sometime in 2027.
While its Wizard of Oz experience had a price tag of around $100 million to bring the adaptation of the 1939 Judy Garland feature to the Vegas masses — including recreating a tornado inside the venue — it’s unclear if Rocky Horror will carry a similar budget. A Sphere rep declined comment on the adaptation’s price tag. The project is being put together in a deal with Primary Wave Music and 20th Century Studios.
“Through Sphere Studios, we are building a slate of original experiences that push the boundaries of technology and storytelling for this new medium, while always keeping the audience at the center of the experience,” Dolan stated in unveiling the project. “Since The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in 1975, it redefined audience participation and became a cultural phenomenon. With Sphere, we have the opportunity to take that spirit of immersion to an entirely new level.”
Oz, which bowed on August 28 of last year, has now reeled in $400 million in sales and sold 3 million tickets since its premiere. That’s an additional $30 million in sales since the company disclosed its earnings on May 5.
If Oz was a test case in the viability of adapting classic movie IP for an experiential venue, it appears to have passed with flying colors financially. That title included Hollywood-grade work from the likes of producer Jane Rosenthal, VFX expert Ben Grossmann and Oppenheimer editor Jennifer Lame. The creative team for Rocky Horror has yet to be revealed.
For those comparing the $400 million Oz sales figure with blockbuster theatrical movies, the back-of-the-napkin math works out to about $133 a ticket, far more than the, say, $12-$15 a ticket for a typical film. Notably, only one film, Universal and Illumination’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, has grossed more than $400 million domestically so far this year.
And Oz won’t be going anywhere, if anything it may be more firmly ensconced in the Sphere’s Vegas portfolio. “I think the biggest learning is that we can do multiple shows, even different shows, concert and features like Wizard of Oz all in the same day that the building can handle it, that the market can handle it,” Dolan told analysts in May.
The Sphere, a longtime vision for the mogul (who fronts his own band JD and the Straight Shot), had launched with concert experiences from the likes of U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company, Backstreet Boys and Metallica. Phish, No Doubt, Kenney Chesney are among the names packing the venue this year.
On deck, the Sphere’s studio is developing extreme sports film From The Edge, co-directed by Free Solo helmers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, as an original feature with a to-be-determined premiere date.
Dolan has plans to bring the Sphere concept to other major cities (“We’d like to move as quickly as we can to building multiple Spheres,” he has said). Early this year the company signed a deal to develop a smaller Sphere in the Washington, D.C., metro area.
Asked about other potential adaptations and its talks with studio rightsholders about IP adaptations, Dolan replied in its May call with analysts, “The leverage is that we’re the only venue that does this. So it’s not like somebody else can take that product and go put it into a big immersive environment like a Sphere. So it’s really up to us which ones we choose.”
Entertainment
Corey Feldman gets diagnosis following in-flight emergency
It’s everyone’s worst nightmare: food poisoning . . . on a plane!
1980s heartthrob Corey Feldman had a medical emergency during a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles on Monday and was met by paramedics at the gate who rushed him to the hospital.
After spending the night there and getting numerous tests to see if the tummy turbulence was pancreatitis or gallstones, his rep tells us it was just a good old-fashioned case of food poisoning.
It is unclear if the “Goonies” star was a victim of airport dining.
“Corey is doing much better and is now out of the hospital,” the rep tells us.
A source close to Feldman told TMZ the ’80s teen star was feeling sick on the flight and was checked out by a doctor who happened to be a fellow passenger.
“Corey wants to thank everyone for all of the love and well wishes,” his rep told us. “He has definitely seen a lot of the messages and really appreciates everything.”
Feldman is releasing a new single called “What Am I Here 4” on June 22 and is celebrating his birthday with two performances in California the weekend of July 25.
Feldman was in Chicago to attend an anniversary celebration for the 1986 classic “Stand By Me,” along with co-stars Jerry O’Connell and Wil Wheaton.
Late Sunday night, Feldman shared a carousel of photos and videos to Instagram of him driving to Chicago for the event. He stopped by Michael Jackson’s childhood home in Gary, Indiana, for an impromptu visit to “pay respects” to the late singer.
Jackson died at the age of 50 after suffering a heart attack caused by a drug overdose on June 25, 2009.
“We’re on our way to Chicago to tear it up,” Feldman, who competed on “Dancing With the Stars” last fall, said in a video on social media. “Gonna be a great night. Lots of people coming — thousands.”
Entertainment
Rapper Mystikal Sentenced to 20 Years in Rape Case
Rapper Mystikal has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a woman at his Louisiana home in 2022.
The victim appeared before the court on Tuesday and asked for the maximum sentence, according to WBRZ. She spoke of the incident where Mystikal “choked her, pulled braids out of her hair and forcibly raped her.” After she spoke, the rapper told the courtroom, “If I did that to you, I deserve the max sentence.”
Mystikal, whose real name is Michael Tyler, was arrested in 2022 for first-degree rape and false imprisonment. This past March, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges of third-degree rape. According to WBRZ, he filed a motion this past Friday to withdraw his plea because he “did not have sufficient opportunity to fully consider the consequences” before confessing to the crime. The filing stated that he was “under significant emotional distress and felt substantial pressure to make an immediate decision.”
The rapper, best known for the hits “Shake Ya Ass” and “Danger (Been So Long),” was arrested in 2022 on accusations of beating, choking and robbing a woman at his home in Ascension Parish. The victim, who was not named in the report, said he took her keys and phone and raped her while she searched for the money he had taken. He then allowed her to leave after forcing her to send him money via CashApp.
The 55-year-old would have been facing a life sentence had he been convicted of initial charges that included first-degree rape, simple criminal damage to property, domestic abuse battery by strangulation, simple robbery, and false imprisonment in the assault.
Mystikal faced similar domestic abuse charges in 2004 after sexually assaulting his hairstylist and subsequently spent six years in prison. In 2012, he was jailed for three months on misdemeanor domestic abuse charges, and five years later, he was charged with rape and kidnapping before the case was dropped.
Entertainment
Wedding to Divorce
After 10 years of marriage, Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo are getting divorced.
The two have been practically inextricable over the past decade as Jelly Roll (real name Jason DeFord) became one of the biggest country stars on the planet, and Bunnie (Alyssa DeFord) became a popular podcaster. Throughout this time, Jelly and Bunnie exhibited a remarkable candor while talking about themselves and each other, whether discussing the ups and downs of their relationship, the nitty-gritty details of their sex lives, or their complicated pasts.
Jelly Roll often credited Bunnie with changing the course of his life, including at the Grammys earlier this year while accepting the award for Best Contemporary Country Album. “I want to thank my beautiful wife,” he said during his speech. “I would have never changed my life without you. I would have ended up dead or in jail. I would have killed myself if it wasn’t for you and Jesus. I thank you for that.”
Bunnie, for her part, told People earlier this year, “When you are with somebody for a long time, you are going to have to love them at their lowest. And I truly believe that true love is not about so much as accepting things that you shouldn’t, but I do think that everybody deserves a second chance. Loving somebody at their lowest is one of the most beautiful things you can do, especially if they bloom and they blossom like my husband has.”
Details about the couple’s divorce — and the reasons behind it — remain unclear (and reps for both did not immediately return requests for comment). Based on their past openness, one can potentially assume the full story will spill out soon, but until then here’s a look back at Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo’s relationship.
Meet Cute
Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo met in 2015 at a concert in Las Vegas, when Jelly was opening for the country rap duo Moonshine Bandits. In her memoir, Stripped Down, Bunnie recalled being “mesmerized” after Jelly introduced himself, adding, “This man was not my type. But shaking his hand felt like every star in the sky collided. My soul recognized his. It was as if I’d been looking for him my entire life.”
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At the time, Jelly Roll was an aspiring musician with a bunch of mixtapes, collaborative projects, and one proper studio album to his name. He also had a checkered past, having spent time in prison during his early twenties on drug and robbery charges. Those experiences had inspired him to pursue music, but he’d yet to secure his big break.
As for Bunnie, she endured a difficult, destabilizing, and abusive childhood. As an adult, she worked as a stripper, before becoming a high-end escort. She frequently described sex work as “my way of taking my power back” after being sexually abused and raped when she was younger.
Bunnie’s career in sex work didn’t phase Jelly Roll, either — in fact, he barely understood what it meant to be a high-end escort. “When I met her, I was living out of a ’96 van and I was doing $100 a night shows,” Jelly Roll said in a 2022 interview with Bert Kreischer, adding: “I was dead broke, and she just kind of took to me. She was really making money in the sex work industry, like real money. I didn’t know that existed.”
Whirlwind Romance and Vegas Wedding
Not long after they met, Jelly Roll invited Bunnie to join him on tour. She described it in her memoir as “the most intense yet awesome way to begin a relationship,” though she also had some concerns as she was just getting out of a difficult second marriage. “I needed to be single and do things on my own,” she wrote. “I needed to fall in love with myself and heal. But along came that sweet-talking country boy and I swooned.”
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In 2016, at another show in Las Vegas that Jelly Roll was playing, he asked her to marry him. His exact words were reportedly, “Will your fine ass marry my white trash ass tonight in Las Vegas?” They tied the knot at a Sin City chapel soon after the proposal.
Early Years and Struggles
Jelly Roll often credited Bunnie with being a crucial anchor in his life. As she continued her career in sex work, Bunnie helped Jelly Roll finance musical projects like 2017’s Addiction Kills, and secure custody of his daughter from another marriage. Tearing up in a 2023 interview, Jelly Roll recalled how Bunnie also helped him get a condo so that his daughter could have a place to live and go to a good school.
“I’ll never forget, Bunnie looked at me and, man it makes me emotional, she said, ‘No matter what happens with us, I’m gonna help you get this little girl,’” Jelly recalled. “And I was like, man, what character… Because dude, I’m broke. I can’t afford the lawyer, I can’t afford anything. What am I gonna do, put the kid in a van? And Bunnie’s like, ‘I’ll help you.’”
But there were other challenges, too. In her memoir, Bunnie detailed a tumultuous period as she and Jelly Roll bounced between Las Vegas and Nashville and tried to get a handle on their relationship and personal demons. Bunnie was trying to kick cocaine and pills, too, and cited the custody battle over Jelly Roll’s daughter, Bailee, as one of the reasons she wanted to get sober.
Bunnie also wrote that she and Jelly Roll fought a lot during this time, and he once cheated on her with an ex. The couple briefly split in 2018, but counseling finally helped bring some stability to their relationship.
“My husband and I dug deep into the generational toxic traits we’d grown up with,” she wrote. “And we talked so many times about how we don’t want to just do what we were taught. Now, we were in this together. It finally felt so good to have my best friend back and be on this journey to be better humans. When I think back on it, we just made a vow to change. And we did. No matter how hard it got. No matter what the other person said in therapy, we were finally both fully committed to working on ourselves together and separately.”
In 2025, Jelly Roll called his infidelity “one of the worst moments” of his life. He continued: “I did a lot of work to repair that relationship, you know what I mean? The repair has been special. And we’re stronger than we could have ever been. I wish our story would have went in a way that it never had an affair, but — and I’m in no way glad it happened — but man, I’m proud of who we are today.”
Breakthrough Moments
In 2020, Jelly Roll’s music career finally started to take off. Over the next few years, hits like “Save Me,” “Son of a Sinner,” and “Need a Favor” turned him into the one of the biggest country stars in the world. In November 2022, the couple made their red carpet debut at the CMA Awards. A few months later, in April 2023, Jelly Roll scored his first professional awards, winning three prizes at the CMT Music Awards.
“A man that was told no every corner he turned only to hit ‘em with that Nashville shuck & come out on top every time,” Bunnie wrote in a celebratory Instagram post. “I always tell you you have a horseshoe stuck up your ass, but that isn’t it baby. This is sheer will to spread light, to move mountains, to touch broken souls with your voice, to break generational traumas & set examples for the future.”
At the same time, Bunnie Xo was carving out a new career path of her own. In 2019, she launched a podcast, Dumb Blonde, at her kitchen table, which she partly funded through sex work and a new OnlyFans account. By 2022, the podcast was such a success that she was able to quit sex work and shut down her OnlyFans.
In 2023, Jelly Roll shared a “Bunnie appreciation post” on Instagram, writing, “I watch what this woman has overcame and her passion and determination to be something better has inspired me from the moment I met her. She saved me in one of the darkest times of my life. She has been nothing but supportive.” And of her podcasting success, Jelly Roll stressed that Bunnie had done it all on her own: “She didn’t want to be just ‘Jelly Roll’s wife’ she wanted to build her own empire to empower women and share her story in hopes that it could motivate others to believe that they could change their lives and be happy.”
Speaking with The New York Times in 2023, Jelly Roll recalled the conversations he and Bunnie would have about the day she’d get to quit sex work. “Well, we had the conversation early, when we were dreamers laying in bed together and I was really broke and she was pretty broke,” he said. “That was our dream. To see it come to fruition has been unbelievable. It’s a modern American fairy tale. It’s this kind of white trash-y one, but it’s poetic and beautiful in this [fucked] up way.”
Vow Renewals
In 2023, seven years after their wedding in Vegas, Jelly Roll and Bunnie returned to the same chapel to renew their vows. “7 years ago my wife and stumbled into a little chapel in Las Vegas,” Jelly Roll wrote on Instagram. “7 years later we walked into that same little chapel and renewed our vows … my only regret on the night we got married was I never got to see her in a dress…. We made that right. I may have never gave my wife the wedding she truly deserved but I plan on giving her the life she deserves for the rest of it. I love you more anything mama bear. You are my anchor.”
Bunnie added in her own post: “Before we stumbled in that chapel, you grabbed my hands & looked me straight in the eyes & said, ‘Bunnie, our lives won’t always be like this. You won’t have to do what you do for much longer, we’re going to figure this out. I promise you.’ I had no idea what the world had in store for us, but I didn’t care as long as I had you by my side to conquer it.”
Final Act
By all accounts, Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo’s relationship seemed as strong and secure as ever in the years leading up to their divorce. Jelly Roll’s continued to turn out hits, while Dumb Blonde remained a very popular podcast. Jelly Roll also got his old drug and robbery convictions pardoned in Tennessee, and lost several hundred pounds. (“He was beautiful before, but now I catch myself drooling looking at him; he looks so good!” Bunnie told People earlier this year.)
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The couple were also working to expand their family. As they raised Jelly’s two kids from other relationships, Bailee and Noah, they revealed in 2024 that they were trying to have a child through in vitro fertilization. However, it does not appear that the couple’s efforts were successful. In August 2025, Bunnie said on her podcast that she’d “been on IVF meds for fucking six months and going through heartbreak and fucking so much shit.” Earlier this year, she called IVF “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through.”
Divorce
Though the news just broke on Monday, June 15, Jelly Roll reportedly filed for divorce from Bunnie in May in a Williamson County, Tennessee, court. According to court docs, Jelly Roll cited “irreconcilable differences,” saying he and Bunnie were “unable to live together successfully as Husband and Wife.”
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