Dirty Pop

Singer Justin Timberlake has been arrested for driving while intoxicated in the Hamptons, a law enforcement official told ABC News.

The arrest occurred Monday night in Sag Harbor, New York. The pop star will be in court on Tuesday.

The actor, who was best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends, was found dead at a Los Angeles-area home on Saturday.

TMZ reported that Perry was found in a jacuzzi at the home, and no drugs were found at the scene.

The 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' stars came up with the idea for their Four Walls Irish American Whiskey in a bar, of course

The stars of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are bringing their humor and charm to a new venture: whiskey.

Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, and Charlie Day launched an Irish American whiskey brand called Four Walls, and it is now available nationwide, PEOPLE can reveal exclusively.

After the trio released a limited whiskey in 2022 to raise money for the bartending community, they started to experiment with a new spirit.

In a hilarious YouTube video about the "origin story," Day sips on a smooth Irish whiskey, while Howerton orders an American rye for "something a little more bold." A tap on the back from McElhenney forces the two drinks to spill into one another, thus creating Four Walls Irish American Whiskey.

"We wanted to create a brand celebrating the four walls that have held our good times in and kept our troubles out,” Howerton says of the whiskey named after the four walls of a bar.

The 80-proof blend is hitting bars around the country soon, and is now available to order online at FourWallsWhiskey.com, ReserveBar, Flaviar, and Caskers for $36. The brand is also selling merchandise, with 100% of proceeds from select items benefiting Tales of the Cocktail Foundation.

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"After our higher-end releases, it was important for us to make a whiskey priced that all of our fans could try and that bartenders would want to use in everyday drinks," Day said in a statement.

"The three of us have come up with some of our best ideas and had some of our most memorable nights out together in unassuming rooms where great bartenders made us feel like a million bucks when we probably didn't have a hundred between us," added McElhenney. “That is the power of a great bar - when your favorite people are there, your favorite bartender is working, and a great song is playing. Nothing can beat that good time, and that’s what Four Walls is all about.”

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows the daily shenanigans of Philadelphia bar owners Charlie Kelly (Day), Mac (McElhenney) and Dennis (Howerton). Kaitlin Olson — McElhenney's real-life wife — plays Dennis’ sister Dee, who is the pub’s lead bartender. Danny DeVito also appears as Frank Reynolds, a.k.a. the legal father of Dennis and Dee.

The show premiered its 16th season in June.

Dylan Mulvaney is being honored as this year's Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year with The Trevor Project.

In its third year, the award — which was previously bestowed upon Lil Nas X and Janelle Monáe — celebrates those who use their platforms to make the world a safer place for LGBTQ+ youths.

Mulvaney, 26, a trans TikTok star and activist, has long been vocal about LGBTQ+ rights and shared her transition journey with her audience through the "Days of Girlhood" series. Through each of her videos, Mulvaney brought light to exactly what she was going through — the ups and downs — and shedding light on a topic that some of her viewers may not have been familiar with. Most importantly, she fought to increase allyship and awareness for trans people and helped to show LGBTQ+ teens who are struggling that things get better.

When Mulvaney took home the Streamy Award last month for breakout creator, she used her acceptance speech to call for allies "to support trans people publicly and proudly."

She further told PEOPLE backstage after her win that it was the "best moment" of her year so far, adding, "It just means a lot to me, but I also think that the fact a trans person can win an award like this in such a scary time of transphobia — it makes me feel like there's hope."

“I am deeply honored to accept The Trevor Project's Suicide Prevention Advocate of the Year award,” Mulvaney said in a press release. “Trevor’s life-saving work holds a special place in my heart because it represents a lifeline for so many who are struggling with their identity and may not feel accepted as their authentic self. To anyone feeling lost or scared, I want you to know that you are so incredibly loved and there is light after the moments of darkness. Always remember that you are never alone, you are perfect just the way you are, and organizations like The Trevor Project are here to provide a safe space to talk whenever you need, 24/7."

Mulvaney went on to say that she is "so proud" to be a part of a community that "fights tirelessly" for a better tomorrow.

"This award stands for all of us," she added. "Let’s continue to work together to uplift and empower LGBTQ young people and create a world where no young person ever feels that hope is out of reach.”

"In a world where LGBTQ young people too often face adversity and discrimination, Dylan Mulvaney stands as a source of light and hope, reminding us that there is strength in unity and power in vulnerability,” said Kevin Wong (he/him), senior vice president of marketing, communications, and content for The Trevor Project.

“Through her ongoing advocacy work and unapologetic celebration of their trans identity, Dylan is an exemplary possibility model for LGBTQ young people to envision a world for themselves where they can be happy, successful, and thrive openly and authentically. By letting us into her personal journey and showcasing all of the wonderful parts of the trans experience, Dylan is inspiring a new generation of LGBTQ young people to love themselves fully and we are so honored to celebrate them with this award.”

Donate to the Trevor Project through Mulvaney's charity page here.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

If you or someone you know needs help or support, The Trevor Project's trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386, via chat www.TheTrevorProject.org/Help, or by texting START to 678678.

Angelina Jolie is opening up about her younger — darker — self and says that part of her may now be resurfacing.

The actor sat down with Vogue in an interview highlighting the forthcoming launch of her fashion line, Atelier Jolie, an endeavor that will marry her socially conscious values with her affinity for fashion. But the Oscar-winning actor discussed more than Atelier Jolie.

The single mother of six told the outlet that having children saved her. Being present as a mother, Jolie explained, kept her from delving deeper into the darkness she’d faced in the last decade.

She was probably referencing her highly publicized roller-coaster relationship with Brad Pitt. He and Jolie met on the set of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” in 2004 and tied the knot in 2014 after 10 years of being a couple, and in 2016, Jolie filed for divorce — a messy and acrimonious dissolution that has played out in the media through various lawsuits and cases over the last several years. Jolie was also probably alluding to undergoing a full mastectomy in 2013, a medical choice she wrote about in a New York Times op-ed.

“I was 26 when I became a mother,” she told Vogue. “My entire life changed. Having children saved me — and taught me to be in this world differently.”

The actor adopted her son Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt from an orphanage in Cambodia in 2002. Pitt adopted Maddox a few years later.

Before the adoption, she told the Associated Press, she had never wanted to be a mom.

“It’s strange, I never wanted to have a baby,” she said. “I never wanted to be pregnant. I never babysat. I never thought of myself as a mother.” But, with Maddox, she said her feelings changed.

Jolie went on to adopt daughter Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt in late 2005, and in 2006, Jolie and Pitt announced they were expecting a baby. Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born that year. Jolie then adopted Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt in 2007. Pitt adopted him in 2008. That same year, Jolie and Pitt revealed that Jolie was again pregnant, and in July, she gave birth to twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt.

“I think, recently, I would’ve gone under in a much darker way had I not wanted to live for them,” Jolie told Vogue.

The actor also looked back to her younger years, when she was known for making headlines that solidified her standing as a Hollywood “bad girl.” “I went through heavy ... times and I survived them,” she said in a 2011 interview with CBS. “I didn’t die young.”

It’s a label she still owns.

“I was quite dark when I was young,” she told Vogue. “I was a punk, not the popular kid — going to thrift stores, cutting things up, burning little teeny cigarette holes into things: That was me as a teenager, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Maybe that part of me wants to push back.”

Russell Brand is being investigated in the U.K. After a joint exposé by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4's Dispatches accused the 48-year-old comedian of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse over a seven-year period, the Metropolitan Police told ET that they're investigating him. Brand has denied the claims against him.

Per the Met, since the exposé, they've received a number of allegations of sexual offenses in London, as well as a number of allegations of sexual offenses committed elsewhere in the country. The Met is investigating the claims, all of which are non-recent, they said.

Officers will be offering specialist support to all of the women who have made allegations. The investigation is being carried out by detectives in the Met's Central Specialist Crime Command, led by Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy.

"We continue to encourage anyone who believes they may have been a victim of a sexual offense, no matter how long ago it was, to contact us," Furphy told ET in a statement. "We understand it can feel like a difficult step to take and I want to reassure that we have a team of specialist officers available to advise and support."

The four women included in the exposé claimed the sexual assaults happened between 2006 and 2013. One day before the story was published, Brand took to social media to "absolutely refute" its claims, which he referred to as "extremely egregious and aggressive attacks."

"As I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual... I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent," Brand said in part. "And I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny."

In light of the allegations against Brand, his live tour has been postponed and YouTube has suspended his ability to monetize his channel on the platform.

Bam Margera has hit a fantastic milestone on his road to recovery ... we're told he's been sober for a month and is even hitting the skate park again.

Sources close to Bam tell TMZ ... Bam recently reached the 1-month mark and has been living on a farm owned by another professional skateboarder just outside of Philadelphia.

We're told he's been on the farm with his girlfriend, Dannii -- the 2 have been going to the gym every day and hiking with their dogs, and Bam's lost a ton of weight ... which has given him the ability to start skating again, and he's once again making it look easy.

Our sources say he's been loving getting back into the sport, but more importantly, has kept a really tight circle of positive friends and influences. Dannii even gave him an ultimatum that seems to have helped -- he picked her over the booze.

We're told the former "Jackass" star feels this is the first time he's wanted to get sober for himself ... as opposed to being forced by family or friends through an intervention.

As we reported, Bam's been in a legal battle with his estranged wife, Nikki, over custody of their 5-year-old kid, Phoenix -- she was granted temporary sole custody of the boy last month, following an arrest and citation for separate instances of public intoxication. Bam has been able to FaceTime with Phoenix 4 times a week.

BTW, Bam's brother, Jess, revealed earlier this year Bam destroyed a guitar they got from Billy Idol in a fit of rage. We're told Bam and Dannii hung out with the singer in Philly last weekend after a concert, and Billy actually signed a new guitar for him.

Way to go, Bam ... keep it up.

Matthew Scott Montgomery, who appeared in "So Random!" and other series, says he was subjected to shock therapy as part of his supposed treatment.

The Disney Channel put Matthew Scott Montgomery on the road to stardom more than a decade ago, but privately, the actor was grappling to come to terms with his true self.

Appearing on Tuesday’s episode of “Vulnerable With Christy Carlson Romano,” Montgomery recalled his decision to seek out so-called gay conversion therapy during his early years in Hollywood.

“In the environment that I grew up in, you’re taught that you deserve to be punished all the time,” said the North Carolina native, who appeared on “So Random!” and “Sonny With a Chance,” among other Disney Channel series.

“At the time, the career stuff was going so well that I was still in this broken prison brain of thinking: ‘I’m on red carpets. I’m on TV every week. This is too good. I should be punished on my days off.’”

He added: “Disney had nothing to do with it. It was not their idea. They didn’t know; no one knew. My cast mates did not know at the time.”

Montgomery said he visited a center in Los Angeles that was known for working with men in entertainment, though he didn’t identify anyone by name.

“Their selling point was, you look at any billboard in LA and see any male actor — they’ve been through these walls before,” he said. There, he was subjected to both electroshock therapy and hypnosis as part of his supposed treatment.

“They would kind of do a hypnosis-y kind of thing where you would imagine scenarios,” he explained. “You imagine the world is post-apocalypse and it’s a decimated Earth, and the only person left on Earth is a straight man. ... You go and you walk up and hug a straight man. And when you hugged the straight man in my mind, they would zap my hands, like the electric shock.”

Conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as “reparative therapy,” is an unfounded and harmful practice that attempts to change an LGBTQ person’s sexuality or gender identity. It has been explicitly discredited by the American Psychological Association and other top medical groups.

At present, 22 U.S. states have banned conversion therapy ― which has been known to treat LGBTQ identity as though it were an addiction ― on minors. Last year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to “explore guidance to clarify that federally-funded programs cannot offer so-called ‘conversion therapy.’”

However, as Montgomery’s remarks demonstrate, the practice continues to be promoted by some, especially within conservative religious communities. The actor described his parents as “very, very conservative,” and said they “were really upset” when he came out as gay at 18.

“My mom collapsed sobbing when she found out,” he said, adding that his father told him, “Being gay is a choice.”

Ultimately, Montgomery came to the realization that he could live as his authentic self after appearing in a production of Del Shores’ “Yellow,” in which he played a queer teenager who is taken in by a loving family after being rejected by his birth mother, a conservative Christian.

“That was the therapy I actually needed because I got the experience of what it was like to have a family not only love me, but celebrate me and really accept me,” he said.

These days, Montgomery’s career is once again on the upswing. Last year, it was announced that “Howdy, Neighbor!” — an LGBTQ-inclusive horror film featuring a script he’d written — had been picked up for production. He also recently reunited with Demi Lovato, a fellow Disney Channel veteran, on the Peacock documentary series “Unidentified.”

In his “Vulnerable” interview, he described Lovato as “my soulmate” and “the person who loves me the deepest,” and he credited the pop star with helping him “curate a life that was filled with love and art and expression.”

Bijou Phillips filed to end her 12-year marriage to the "That '70s Show" star less than a week after she said she would be standing by him.

Danny Masterson’s wife, Bijou Phillips, has filed for divorce from the former “That ’70s Show” cast member just weeks after he was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for raping two women.

TMZ is reporting that Phillips filed divorce documents in a Los Angeles-area courtroom on Monday.

Her lawyer, Lauzon Paluch, told the website that Phillips “has decided to file for divorce from her husband during this unfortunate time” and said “her priority remains with her daughter.”

Paluch said the effect of the recent events “has been unimaginably hard on the marriage and the family” but stressed that Masterson “was always present” for her “during her most difficult times of her life” and “is a wonderful father to their daughter.”

The filing comes less than a week after sources close to the former actor and model told People that she had no plans to end the 12-year marriage despite being “distraught” by the course of events.

Phillips’ divorce filing has become part of the chain reaction among Masterson’s friends and family since his conviction.

His former “That ’70s Show” cast mates Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis came under fire after writing letters calling for leniency on Masterson’s behalf. Both then stepped down from a nonprofit organization that Kutcher co-founded in 2009 with then-wife Demi Moore that seeks to combat child sex abuse.

Manson blew his nose on a concert videographer in New Hampshire in an “egregious” assault, a judge said

Marilyn Manson has been sentenced to 20 hours of community service and a fine of about $1,400 for spitting and blowing his nose on a concert videographer, The Associated Press reports. The incident took place at a 2019 concert in Gilford, New Hampshire. Manson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor simple assault charge after turning himself in to authorities some 18 months after his arrest warrant was issued.

In a court statement read in her absence, the videographer, Susan Fountain, said, “I’ve never been humiliated or treated like I was by this defendant. For him to spit on me and blow his nose on me was the most disgusting thing a human being has ever done.” The judge described the assault as “egregious,” according to The Associated Press.

Manson must also alert police to any concerts planned for New Hampshire for the next two years and complete his community service by Sunday, February 4, 2024. He is permitted to carry out the service in California, where he resides.

When reached by Pitchfork, a representative for Marilyn Manson offered no comment.

In 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kristen Bell and Russell Brand were thrown into raunchy sex scenes - but Bell made sure of no funny business off-screen

Kristen Bell threatened to "lop Russell Brand’s nuts off" if he tried anything with her on the set of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

The pair were brought together for the 2008 Hollywood rom-com - also starring Jason Segel, Mila Kunis and Jonah Hill - as celebs whose secret romance was just uncovered (to the heartbreak of her ex-boyfriend).

However, following accusations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse against Brand in a documentary - accusations he’s fervently denied - prior comments about his behaviour across his career have started resurfacing.

To promote Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Kristen was grilled on Brand’s known sexual lothario image of the time, and how that tied into his role as sex-crazed rockstar, Aldous Snow, in the film.

Not one to mince her words, Kristen - who is married to comedian Dax Shepard - declared that he "didn’t try to mess with her or get in her pants".

“He knew I would lop his nuts off,” she bluntly told the interviewer.

In another chat, she said that she had clearly shut down the idea of any sexual activity with the British star from the outset.

“I made it really clear from the beginning that I would sock him in the balls if he tried anything. So he was intimidated,” she said.

However, in a chat with Empire magazine, Kristen acknowledged Brand as a "gentleman" during sex scenes.

Leslie Jones told People magazine while promoting her new memoir, “Leslie F*cking Jones,” that her longtime friend Chris Rock went to counseling after Will Smith slapped him at the 2022 Academy Awards. Rock wrote the foreword to Jones’ new book.

“That shit was humiliating. It really affected him,” Jones said. “People need to understand his daughters, his parents, saw that. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.”

Variety has reached out to Rock’s representative for comment.

Jones added that the Oscars slap “infuriated” her, adding, “You don’t know that I was going to jump in my car and roll up there. I was so fucking mad on so many levels… Chris Rock did a fucking joke. I know Will, too… I was like, you couldn’t handle that shit afterwards? This is the Oscars. The whole world is watching.”

Rock was presenting the Oscar for best documentary when he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head, despite her public battle with alopecia. Smith reacted by taking to the stage and slapping Rock across the face. He returned to his seat and yelled at Rock, “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.” Smith, who went on to win the Oscar for best actor that same night, ended up resigning from the Academy amid backlash to the slap. The Academy then banned Smith from its membership and from attending events such as the Oscars for 10 years.

Sean Penn recently graced the cover of Variety magazine and lambasted Smith for the Oscars slap.

“I don’t know Will Smith. I met him once,” Penn said. “He seemed very nice when I met him. He was so fucking good in ‘King Richard.’ So why the fuck did you just spit on yourself and everybody else with this stupid fucking thing? Why did I go to fucking jail for what you just did? And you’re still sitting there? Why are you guys standing and applauding his worst moment as a person?”

Jones’ memoir will be released on Sept. 19.

The late-night host has faced harsh criticism after announcing the return of his show last week.

Bill Maher is the latest host to walk back plans to return to TV without WGA writers amid the Hollywood strikes.

Maher credited reports that the AMPTP would soon return to negotiations with the striking WGA as the reason for this reversal. "My decision to return to work was made when it seemed nothing was happening and there was no end in sight to this strike," Maher tweeted on Monday. "Now that both sides have agreed to go back to the negotiating table I'm going to delay the return of Real Time, for now, and hope they can finally get this done."

After announcing last week that Real Time with Bill Maher would return to production "sans writers or writing," the host faced immense pushback. Keith Olbermann, for example, tweeted: "As somebody who's known you since 1978: F--- you, Bill."

Real Time with Bill Maher joins The Drew Barrymore Show, The Talk, and The Jennifer Hudson Show in delaying their planned returns amid pressure from strikers.

Now that the unions have flexed their power and demonstrated the public's continuing sympathy with the strikers, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is returning to the negotiating table. Deadline reports that the AMPTP will resume bargaining with the WGA this Wednesday.

Russell Brand’s upcoming live shows have all been postponed following allegations of rape and sexual assault.

“We are postponing these few remaining addiction charity fundraiser shows, we don’t like doing it – but we know you’ll understand,” said a one-line statement from the promoters of Brand’s Bipolarisation tour in the past few minutes.

Brand was due to perform tomorrow at the Theatre Royal Windsor, with further dates in Wolverhampton and Plymouth.

Brand’s management and bosses at the Theatre Royal had spent this morning deciding whether to proceed with tonight’s show. A Theatre Royal statement said it will be “offering ticket refunds in line with our Terms & Conditions of sale.”

"I’m trying to mature here and realize I can just walk away from the parts of this that no longer make me happy” said the singer-songwriter

Maren Morris released the songs “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here” on Friday — and announced she’s also getting out of the country music industry.

The singer-songwriter, 33, revealed in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that she’s leaving the genre and plans to release music on Columbia Records, instead of Columbia Nashville, moving forward. The Grammy winner also opened up about her decision to “take a step back,” explaining that she’s felt “very, very distanced” from industry and its politics.

“I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over,” Morris told the outlet of country music. “But it’s burning itself down without my help.”

The “Middle” singer opened up about the challenges of advocating for progress in the country industry and being outspoken about her progressive beliefs — which have included supporting the LGBTQ+ community, taking a stand for the Black Lives Matter movement, and critiquing people like Jason Aldean’s wife Brittany Kerr Aldean for making transphobic comments.

“I’ve always been an asker of questions and a status quo challenger just by being a woman. So it wasn’t really even a choice,” Morris said. “The further you get into the country music business, that’s when you start to see the cracks. And once you see it, you can’t un-see it.”

The pop artist explained that she tried to advocate for change, but only found that made her unpopular. She added, “I’m trying to mature here and realize I can just walk away from the parts of this that no longer make me happy.”

The star continued, “Being one of the few women that had any success on country radio, everything you do is looked at under a microscope. You’re scrutinized more than your male peers, even when you’re doing well. So I’ve had to clear all of that out of my head this year and just write songs. A lot of the drama within the community, I’ve chosen to step outside out of it.”

Morris also commented on the popularity of songs like Aldean’s, 46, controversial “Try That in a Small Town,” which received backlash for what many interpreted as having a pro-violent, conservative message. “People are streaming these songs out of spite. It’s not out of true joy or love of the music. It’s to own the libs,” she said.

Fans speculate that the performer’s music video for “The Tree,” which she’s released as a double single project called The Bridge, includes references to the Aldean video. As the new clip also includes posters that read, “Lunatic Country Music Person,” it also appears to include a nod to how former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson labeled her as such.

The hitmaker also recently spoke to Billboard in their Pride issue cover story about her commitment to being an ally.

"I have heard the term 'Shut up and sing' more times than I can count — that’s always the cutesy little threat that they like to make," the CMA award winner said. "So I would say to my peers who are artists and to record-label heads, publishers, songwriters: I don't think any of us got into this art form to be an activist, but that’s ultimately thrust upon you to exist in this space and to feel like you can sleep at night."

She’s living her best life on both coasts while holding nothing back. And thanks to her new album, Guts, the 20-year-old superstar has leveled up — with the whole world watching

Oh, my God — look!” Olivia Rodrigo says. “I just parallel parked for you!”

We’re sitting in Rodrigo’s black Range Rover in L.A.’s Highland Park, stopped outside her producer Dan Nigro’s home studio. Rodrigo has a killer late-July outfit on — short, summery floral dress; tall, brown leather boots; her fingers decked out in rings — but she’s pretty bummed about the new pimple between her eyebrows. Accutane, the acne med she’s been on for about six months, makes her lips perpetually dry, so there’s some Burt’s Bees and two travel tubes of Aquaphor jostling around in the cup holder. It’s all pretty typical for a 20-year-old driver, except for the fact that the calendar on her car’s display screen reads “Rolling Stone interview.”

The parallel-parking thing — funny story. Two years ago, on her angst-ridden anthem “Brutal,” Rodrigo blurted out “I’m not cool, and I’m not smart/And I can’t even parallel park” to the tune of more than half a billion streams. “Brutal” was the opening track on 2021’s Sour, the most feverishly anticipated pop debut in years. The album instantly broke the record for the most-streamed female debut in a single week on Spotify, completing Rodrigo’s transformation from Disney teen to one of the biggest, most relatable pop stars on the planet in less than six months. She won three Grammys, performed on SNL, and sang two songs with Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. (“He’s uncle vibes,” she says.) At Glastonbury, she dedicated Lilly Allen’s “Fuck You” to the Supreme Court after their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She even visited the president at the White House in an effort to urge young people to get the Covid-19 vaccine. She’s conquered the parking thing, too, apparently. Now, she just has some other stuff to figure out.

Her top priority right now: overcoming the insane amount of pressure to match Sour — and maybe even top it. Enter Guts. “The beginning was really hard,” she says. “I felt like I couldn’t write a song without thinking about what other people were going to think of it. There were definitely days where I found myself sitting at the piano, excited to write a song, and then cried.”

“There’s so much chaos in your head during second-album time,” says Katy Perry, who faced similar expectations while working on 2010’s Teenage Dream. “You have your whole life to make your first record, and then maybe two years to make your second — while going through a real psychological change as well. Like, ‘Oh, my God, I can buy my mom a car,’ and, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have to have the stress from my past.’ But it’s a mental jungle out there.”

Perry offered to serve as a mentor to Rodrigo. “The first time I met her,” Perry says, “I put my hands on her shoulders and was like, ‘Listen, I’m here. Whatever you need.’ Because I know exactly what these pop girlies are going through, and when I was growing up, no one really did that for me.”

Nigro, a fortysomething former alt-rocker and Rodrigo’s closest collaborator, also helped ease her anxiety. “Dan was like, ‘You’ve got to go home and rest,’ ” she recalls. The duo would battle what they jokingly called “the dread” with food breaks, usually burgers or Taiwanese — sometimes Taco Bell if they were feeling lazy. “I’ve really eaten good making the record,” she jokes. She’d often visit Nigro’s one-year-old daughter, tasting her baby food (“I’m like, ‘Shit, this is delicious!’ ”) and gifting her with adorable outfits. “She’s the ultimate cure for writer’s block,” Rodrigo says.

Guts is a collection of pop-punk ragers and aching, pensive burners that suggest that after all that multiplatinum heartbreak, Rodrigo is finally having a blast — a wild and free 20-year-old who holds nothing back. “I’ve got sun in my motherfucking pocket, best believe,” she sings on the euphoric “All-American Bitch.” At other moments, like on “Get Him Back!,” she’s scorchingly funny: “He had an ego and a temper and a wandering eye/He said he’s six-foot-two and I’m like, ‘Dude, nice try!’”

“Our goal was to make something a little more playful, a record that didn’t take itself so seriously,” says Rodrigo, who knows that most fans viewed Sour as a direct response to her split with her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star Joshua Bassett. “The last album was definitely a breakup record, much to my chagrin,” she says. “I was really trying to make it not that, but that’s what it was. I’m feeling a lot happier these days. Everything’s pretty good. So I wasn’t going to make something super devastating, a record of ballads.”

The artist who captured America’s attention by singing “I’m so sick of 17/Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” is now a fully-fledged adult. She recently became a New Yorker, buying an apartment in Greenwich Village (she may or may not have gotten bedbugs). “Living alone is very frightening,” she notes. “I always get scared someone’s going to come in and murder me, or a ghost is going to come and haunt me.” But she’s still bicoastal, renting a house in Beverly Hills, and hoping to buy a couple of neighborhoods over, in Los Feliz. “I go half and half,” she says of both coasts. “Do I feel like I could ever live full time in New York? I just love car culture. I listen to new music solely in the car. Nothing beats it.”

In February, she’ll turn 21. “The thought of being able to sit down in a bar and talk to people you’ve never met sounds like the best time,” she says. Guts is all about those moments of newfound freedom. “This album encapsulates growing up and figuring yourself out in the world, and the awkwardness of that,” she says. “I feel myself growing leaps and bounds.”

We continue our drive, with Rodrigo admitting she’s prone to getting parking tickets. One time, she even hit Nigro’s neighbor’s car (the owner was nice about it). “It was just a little scratch,” she says. “But I was crying so bad. You know that feeling when your car hits something? It’s like your stomach just sinks out of your ass.”

We wind around succulent-strewn streets and avenues that begin to blur together. “Did I go the right way?” she asks, mainly to herself. “We might go for a joyride.”

NIGRO’S HOME STUDIO sits inside a charcoal-painted house enclosed in hedges, with gravel and ferns guarding the persimmon door. Nigro now lives in Pasadena, but he still records here; it’s where they cut Sour and a portion of Guts (they recorded the rest at Electric Lady in New York). Rodrigo gives me a tour, quickly opening and closing a door that reveals a high chair surrounded by clutter before leading me down the hall. One room contains a drum set and a Yamaha upright piano with a super-Seventies burnt-orange bench. There’s a whiteboard containing Rodrigo’s recording schedule in green marker, with red hearts next to the singles “Vampire” and “Bad Idea Right?”

An additional room serves as the main studio, with a red Persian rug and macramé window cover providing the coziest of vibes. A framed photo of Neil Young’s 1970 classic, After the Gold Rush, hangs in the center of the room, not far from a poster advertising Nigro’s old band, As Tall as Lions, performing at the Troubadour back in 2010. Mini Polaroids are lined up along the wall, featuring visitors ranging from indie singer-songwriter Zella Day to Carole King.

In the corner of the living room, between a fireplace and the sliding glass door to the patio, sits a turntable with stacks of records leaning against it. She flips through them, pausing on Sour — she inscribed her producer’s personal copy with the words “To Dan, suck it!” — and then stopping on Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, which includes a track produced by Nigro. “She’s such a fucking good live singer,” Rodrigo says, mentioning she saw Polachek at the Greek Theater in 2021.

Rodrigo has thought a lot about Desire, the followup to Polachek’s solo breakthrough, 2019’s Pang; it’s a model for avoiding the sophomore slump. “It’s not a complete reinvention of the first album, but it’s new and fresh,” Rodrigo says. “We didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel.”

She has some other second albums she loves: Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head, Perry’s Teenage Dream. “She had five Number One hits off of that one album,” she says, calling Perry’s Part of Me one of her favorite music docs. “That album is so iconic and so good.”

There’s a song on Guts titled “Teenage Dream,” but Rodrigo claims it’s a coincidence. “We thought about changing the name,” she admits. “If someone looks up ‘Teenage Dream’ on Spotify, there’s no way in heck that my song’s going to pull up first.”

Either way, her mentor doesn’t mind. “It’s nice to see it resonating through the years to different age groups,” Perry says of the similar titles. “She’s a craftswoman. It’s like when Fleabag really made a huge impression on people. She’s writing about all of our inner thoughts, outward things that we would never say.”

“Teenage Dream,” the final track on Guts, is incredibly different from Perry’s 2010 pop anthem — it begins as a piano dirge but evolves into a cathartic hurricane of rock, as Rodrigo envisions the day she is no longer pop’s brightest, youngest star. Perry sang about never looking back. Rodrigo would prefer not to.

“It’s about a fear of not being a teenager anymore and not having this image of being some type of ingénue or prodigy kid,” she explains. “I grew up in this weird environment where everyone praised me for being talented for my age, and it’s about me facing this pressure of making a sophomore record while also facing this pressure of wondering if people would still think that I was cool even when I wasn’t a 17-year-old girl writing songs anymore.”

Rodrigo is now sitting on a forest-green velvet couch, her boots off to the side, revealing white tube socks with the Parental Advisory label printed on them. Next to us is the studio kitchen, where three bottles of wine sit on the counter. Rodrigo says there were a lot of empty bottles after her album wrap party. “We looked like we were alcoholics,” she jokes.

She sings about partying on Guts in a way she hasn’t before: On “Bad Idea Right?” she declares, “Haven’t heard from you in a couple of months/But I’m out right now and I’m all fucked up”; on “Making the Bed,” she admits, “Sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna be where I am/Getting drunk at a club with my fair-weather friends.”

It’s entirely normal subject matter for someone Rodrigo’s age to sing about, but she was hesitant about including some of those lines on the album. “I was actually so scared to put that out,” she says. “I have a lot of young girl fans, and I’m very conscious of that. But also, it’s real. All of my role models are my role models because they’re unapologetically who they are. I can’t cherry-pick parts of myself to express. And if that’s the worst thing that I’m doing, then I think I’m doing pretty well.”

Some of her core influences are ferociously honest punk and alt-rock records from before she was born. When she was about 14, Rodrigo remembers sleeping with a turntable next to her bed. To wake her up each morning, her mom would drop the needle on Babes in Toyland’s Fontanelle (another excellent second album). Listening to Kat Bjelland’s screams, she’d get dressed and ready for the day. “Rock in that feminine way, that’s just the coolest thing in the world to me,” she says.

Working on Guts, she tried to tap into Babes in Toyland’s raw power, particularly on “All-American Bitch,” whose title Rodrigo found in Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Kicking off the album, the song takes aim squarely at anyone who might have heard Sour and dismissed her as a one-dimensional heartbroken teen: “I forgive, and I forget/I know my age, and I act it.”

“I think everyone can relate to being put in a box in some sense,” she explains. “Something I always grappled with, especially when I was younger, is feeling like I couldn’t be angry or express dissatisfaction or complain for fear of being ungrateful. It was drilled into me, and it caused a lot of problems. I had all this anger bubbling up inside me — especially when you’re a teenager and you’re confused and you feel like the world is out to get you and you’re so insecure — and I’d have dreams where I was going crazy. I felt like I could never be like that in real life.”

“All-American Bitch” contains delicate verses and one hell of a raucous chorus, a move that Rodrigo credits to another big, loud Nineties band. “I have been listening to so much Rage Against the Machine this year,” she says. “That’s my favorite band right now. I would just play it over and over again on my way to and from the studio. I want to go to the Rock Hall of Fame so bad because they’re getting inducted.” She’s going to miss the ceremony this fall in Brooklyn, though, due to “some immovable schedule conflict” — a problem that’s positively driving her nuts right now: “I am literally going to cry myself to sleep about it,” she says.

She’s well aware that some of her most devoted fans — a.k.a. Livies — were hoping that after Sour, she’d release an album titled Sweet. “I mean, I suppose maybe if I was madly in love I would’ve written a Sweet album,” she says. “I don’t know. What’s my next one going to be? Umami or something?”

Madly in love or not, it’s easy to wonder how she might feel about the Olivia who made Sour — the one whose career absolutely exploded after releasing “Drivers License” back in January 2021. “I connect to who I used to be, and it makes me sad,” she says. “I’m like, ‘What are you crying about, girl?’ I’m also like, ‘Ha-ha, you don’t even know, it gets so much better.’”

I wonder if Rodrigo she sees herself becoming the type of artist who won’t mind playing her breakout hit for decades to come. “I was thinking about that the other day,” she says. “I saw Stevie Nicks singing ‘Landslide’ to this huge stadium of people. Not that ‘Drivers License’ is ‘Landslide,’ by any means. But I was like, ‘Damn.’ That heartbreak that you feel when you’re young, thinking about singing that song when I’m Stevie Nicks’ age … it’s really powerful.”

RODRIGO LOVES a trip to the psychic. Not, she makes clear, the shitty ones on Hollywood Boulevard, where they tell you that in order to cleanse your dark energy, you need to cough up $5,000. “They aren’t supposed to do that,” she says. “The good ones that I’ve been to have been only really positive. I’ve even been to one that I saw multiple times. I saw her a year apart, and she was like, ‘Yeah, that didn’t go right. And I knew it back then, but I didn’t want to tell you because you were supposed to go through it.’ I was like, ‘Huh. OK. Maybe!’ ”

Several psychics have told Rodrigo she’s going to have twins. “I’ve always been so obsessed with the idea of motherhood,” she says, before turning the tables on me: “Do you think you’re going to have kids? I’m sorry! That’s such a deep question. We just met.”

We’re sitting outside a taco joint on Figueroa Street, and Rodrigo is dipping chips into guacamole and sipping an iced tea. Children and marriage are two of her favorite topics. She even sings about them on the wistful “Love Is Embarrassing”: “I’m planning out my wedding/With some guy I’m never marrying.” “Since I was a kid, I’d pick out a baby name that would go good with their last name,” she says. “That’s how psychotic I am.”

During several moments of our time together, Rodrigo reverses the interview and asks me questions about my upcoming wedding. “One more and I’ll stop peppering you!” she says. She’s eager to discuss wedding songs; she’s been pondering her own for years. Her current options: Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” Modern English’s “I Melt With You,” and Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life.” “Literally planning my wedding with you over tacos!” she says.

Rodrigo tears up when I tell her I’m planning on a Bob Dylan song. “His discography is so humongous, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface,” she says, though she did name the socially anxious “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” after “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Lately, she’s gotten really into Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks; the latter is her go-to airplane album. “I’ve wanted to write a song [like] ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ for so long. Legend. He’s so good.”

When our server asks for a photo, Rodrigo politely says she’d prefer to take one when she’s done eating. This is new for her; on a recent trip to Hawaii with her best friend, Madison Hu (her former co-star on the Disney series Bizaardvark), she declined to take any photos at all. “I never want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says, “but it was so nice. By not taking a picture, you actually talk to people and get to know them way better. It’s not some transactional vibe.”

Like many children of the internet, Rodrigo has profoundly mixed feelings about social media: She doesn’t know life outside of the apps, yet finds them incredibly burdensome. Especially Instagram, an app that launched when she was seven, on which she now has more than 33 million followers. “I was reading a book that said — I’m going to butcher the number — but our brains are only wired to know 200 people in a clan setting,” she says. “We’re not supposed to know what some pretty girl in Australia is doing at the beach today. Our brains aren’t hard-wired for that information. So I try to take it all with a grain of salt. It does make me feel depressed sometimes.”

Like most pop stars, Rodrigo has a team to help her post on social media (she tries to keep it authentic, because “you can always tell when someone else is doing it”), but that wasn’t the case when she released “Drivers License” in 2021. “I was so overwhelmed by all of the social media shit,” she says. “I truly deleted my social media for six months. Because it was zero to a hundred, baptism by fire. I deleted all of it for a long time, and I’m so happy that I did that at that moment. I have a better handle on it now, but then I was just so cold turkey with it. I’m trying to figure out a happy medium.”

When Rodrigo says “baptism by fire,” she’s referring to the intense public scrutiny that followed “Drivers License” becoming a hit. Listeners of all ages related to the track — just watch that SNL sketch — but they were also obsessed with untangling the drama. By the time Sour came out, millions of adults were deeply invested in a teenage love triangle that allegedly occurred between Rodrigo, Bassett, and fellow Disney actor Sabrina Carpenter.

None of the three have publicly addressed what exactly happened between them, and Rodrigo isn’t about to start. Whether or not Bassett is the guy who listened to “Uptown Girl” with one or more of his co-stars, I’m curious to know how Rodrigo feels about the backlash he faced from strangers on the internet who assumed he left Rodrigo for Carpenter. I bring up an interview he gave last year, where he talked about having a major health crisis as a result.

“I mean, that’s a tricky one,” she says. “I actually, genuinely did not read the article you’re talking about. But, yeah, all that stuff was really crazy. It’s all been handled privately.” She corrects herself: “Handled isn’t the right word, but it’s just not something I like talking about publicly. I take all that stuff seriously, but it happens in privacy. I’m not going to put out a statement. That’s phony. We’re all just people at the end of the day. I deal with it on a person-to-person level that people on Twitter don’t see.”

All the same, the public isn’t going to stop trying to figure out her private life anytime soon. In late June, Rodrigo returned with the supernatural epic “Vampire.” Immediately, fans resumed their sleuthing. This time, though, they suspected the track was about either producer Adam Faze or DJ and influencer Zack Bia, both of whom she was reportedly linked to, and both of whom are older than her — thus the line “Girls your age know better.” Bia could easily be the “cool guy” who only comes out “at night” (he told GQ he’s stayed home just “five or six times” in the past four years). The discourse can be exhausting. Is the song worth another round of public scrutiny?

“I find myself caring less and less,” she says, with Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” blasting on the taco joint’s speakers. “Behind the scenes, I do all of the things I am supposed to do and try to be as prepared as I can. People are going to say what they want to say. I feel like the more you try to control it, the more miserable you are, and the bigger it gets. I just write songs; it’s not my job to interpret them for other people.”

But on a Zoom call with Rodrigo, one month and several interviews with other publications later, she takes a slightly different stance. “I have a really big mouth, and that’s something that I’ve had to learn how to control in this profession,” she says. “But that’s par for the course. I write diaristic songs, so of course everyone’s going to have their own interpretation of it.”

At one point Rodrigo mentions “You’re So Vain,” the Carly Simon song whose target has been a matter of public speculation for more than 50 years. When I finally ask Rodrigo if she was singing about Bia, she takes a moment, exhales, and smiles.

“No comment,” she says.

WE MEET THE following evening at Little Dom’s, a vintage Italian spot that would look more at home in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens than the more hip Los Feliz. Rodrigo is wearing a red-plaid babydoll dress she got from Depop, with black loafers and white socks. “We had a good little chat yesterday,” she says. “I feel like we established a lot.”

Unlike yesterday, Rodrigo didn’t snooze her alarm this morning, and made it to Pilates in Beverly Hills, joined by her friend, actress Bailee Madison. “That’s my workout of choice,” she says. “You can’t fuck it up that badly. I love going to the Pilates places where it’s older women. Nothing worse than a scene-y Pilates place where [you] run into people you know. I get so insecure about it.”

As we sit down at the circular booth, she orders a Diet Coke and asks to sit on my left side (she was born half-deaf in her left ear). When I joke that she’s like Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s a Wonderful Life, she admits she hasn’t seen it. “I don’t know why I cannot see any movie that was made before 1970,” she says. “My brain just doesn’t compute. I’ve always wondered how the old Hollywood accent came to be, like Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. ‘Darling!’ It’s not the way that anybody talks in real life.”

At least in terms of films from the past 53 years, Rodrigo is a total movie buff — she even has a Letterboxd account. She saw two movies last Saturday: Oppenheimer with her dad, followed by 1983’s Valley Girl, starring Nicolas Cage. “It’s his first movie, and he’s oddly so hot,” she says. When I recommend that she see Moonstruck, in which Cage plays an angry, handsome baker with a wooden hand, she makes a note in her phone. “Sounds like a guy I’d fall for,” she says.

Rodrigo was deeply affected by Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which she brings up several times throughout our days together. “I roll my eyes when people talk about shit like this, but here I am, being that person,” she says. “It’s such a beautiful, wonderful feminist movie. I’m so happy to be a girl. I don’t know the last time that I saw a movie where it was so female-centered in a way that wasn’t sexualized, or about some tormented woman going through some shit. It’s just a beautiful, positive movie about this cool girl.”

When I ask her how she feels about Dua Lipa, who made a cameo in the film, she lights up. “I’m so excited for her next album, I actually can’t wait,” she says, then brings up Lipa’s electrifying performance at the 2021 Grammys, which included two Future Nostalgia tracks and speedy outfit changes. “It’s so fucking good. I remember watching it on the TV and melting on the floor. Killed it. So tight and clean. They must have worked their asses off making that. I literally couldn’t do it.”

Rodrigo would rather be seen as a singer-songwriter than a pop star. When we discuss her idols, she mentions the impact Lorde had on her as a child. “I remember hearing ‘Royals’ on the radio,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, you can make a song about anything that you’re feeling.’ It doesn’t have to be this breakup song. She wrote an album about what it was like to be 15 in the suburbs and feeling lost” — a theme that resonated with Rodrigo, who was 10 years old living in the quiet town of Temecula, California, at the time.

But there’s another idol I want to ask about, a glittery elephant in the room: What, if anything, happened between her and Taylor Swift? Early in her music career, Rodrigo was quick to call Swift an inspiration. “I’m just so in awe of her constantly, and I truly would not be the songwriter I am today if I had not grown up being so inspired by everything she does,” she told Ryan Seacrest in March 2021. They exchanged handwritten letters, and Swift gave her a ring similar to one she wore while making Red. Two months later, they met in person at the BRIT Awards.

Things got a little more complicated that summer, when Rodrigo gave Swift and Jack Antonoff two writing credits on Sour: first on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” (which interpolated Swift’s “New Years Day”) and then “Deja Vu” (which was inspired by Tay’s “Cruel Summer”; Rodrigo also gave a credit to St. Vincent, a co-writer on Swift’s song). Even if it was unclear whether Swift demanded the credits, more obsessive fans were convinced this led to a falling out. They began to see the alleged evidence everywhere: Rodrigo bonding over encountering “mean girls” with Alanis Morissette in this magazine; the 2023 Grammys, where Rodrigo and Swift seemingly had zero interactions; Swift selecting Carpenter, Rodrigo’s supposed archnemesis, to open for her Eras Tour in Latin America. Some self-appointed sleuths even wondered whether Rodrigo masked “Vampire” as a love song, when in reality it was about Swift.

When I ask Rodrigo about the alleged feud, she’s sipping on a bowl of Italian wedding soup. She goes quiet. “I don’t have beef with anyone,” she says calmly. “I’m very chill. I keep to myself. I have my four friends and my mom, and that’s really the only people I talk to, ever. There’s nothing to say.” She adds: “There’s so many Twitter conspiracy theories. I only look at alien-conspiracy theories.”

She maintains this stance when I ask about the Sour co-writes, which, by August 2021, also -included Paramore on “Good 4 U.” “I was a little caught off guard,” she says. “At the time it was very confusing, and I was green and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Is that the phrase?” It’s unclear if Rodrigo was forced to give the credits: “It’s not something that I was super involved in,” she admits. “It was more team-on-team. So, I wouldn’t be the best person to ask.”

I’m curious to know what a more experienced Olivia would do. Would she demand credit from a young artist, or shrug it off, like Elvis Costello did when people noted the similarities between “Brutal” and “Pump It Up”? “I don’t think I would ever personally do that,” she says. “But who’s to say where I’ll be in 20, 30 years. All that I can do is write my songs and focus on what I can control.”

We split spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesan, and Rodrigo orders a second Diet Coke before the bill arrives. “Thank you, Daddy Rolling Stone!” she says giddily.

AFTER DINNER, we walk around Los Feliz with Rodrigo’s muscular, tattooed bodyguard a safe distance behind. Having employees tail her isn’t exactly her favorite thing. “I love walking around and being alone,” she says. “People get mad at me for doing it all the time. My managers are like, ‘You can’t do that, you have to have someone with you all the time.’ But I feel safe. Am I safe? No idea. But that’s just not something I’m willing to sacrifice.”

Rodrigo points to a nearby brunch spot. “I went on a bad date here once,” says. This gets her thinking: “I wonder if I’m someone’s worst date. That’s my goal: to wreak so much havoc. Yeah, that’s what I want to do with my life.” We get some ice cream at Jeni’s — Rodrigo chooses honey vanilla bean on a cone — and turn down Franklin Avenue, quoting Bridesmaids. Rodrigo just saw it for a second time, and we exchange lines from the airplane scene back and forth:

“I have this [drink] all the time, and I’m much smaller than you.”

“There’s much more of a sense of community in coach.”

“There’s a colonial woman on the wing!”

For a minute, we attempt to find the Los Feliz murder mansion, from the popular true-crime podcast of that name, but it’s nearly three miles away. Instead, we discuss the Long Island serial killer and the body in a barrel that recently washed up on the Malibu shore, and trade ghost stories our moms told us: Mine woke up in the middle of the night in a Savannah, Georgia, hotel room to find a bride sitting on her bed, while Rodrigo’s once saw a strange man heading down to the basement of the Wisconsin house she grew up in. “Didn’t tell a soul for 10 years,” Rodrigo says of her mom’s experience. “And then my grandma was like, ‘I’m glad we had that house. We got it for so cheap because a guy died in the basement.’”

“Sorry, I’m so morbid lately!” she adds.

She thinks this penchant for darkness probably stems from a love of Harry Potter; like me, Rodrigo was shattered when a Hogwarts acceptance letter didn’t arrive on her 12th birthday. Her love of witchcraft runs deep: In elementary school, she and her friends would “play Harry Potter” after class, filling cauldrons with leaves and water.

Her mother, Jennifer, taught at that school, while her father, Chris, is a therapist. (She says her dad has yet to hear the line about him in “Get Him Back”: “I am my father’s daughter/So maybe I could fix him!”) Rodrigo started home-schooling at 13, when she moved to L.A. to star in Bizaardvark. “Sometimes I feel I have poor social skills because of that upbringing,” she says. “I always felt like I was missing out because I’m an only child and I’m home-schooled.”

The only time Rodrigo was ever starstruck came around that age, when she met Vanessa Hudgens at a movie theater in L.A. “I freaked out,” she says. “She’s Filipino like me, and I remember thinking that was cool.” Even cooler, Rodrigo was later cast as the kid who steps into Hudgens’ role in the show-within-a-show on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. She continued filming on the Disney show even after Sour; the upcoming third season, which she only recently finished shooting, will be her last.

She recalls being on the High School Musical set the moment “Drivers License” debuted at Number One. She called Nigro from the studio bathroom. “I vividly remember being like, ‘Number One, how cool is that?’” she says. “He was like, ‘Olivia, you don’t get it. Your life is different now.’ ”

She gets it now. But she’s still processing it all — even our conversation from the previous day, when I asked her if, like Stevie Nicks, she sees herself performing her hit at 75. “You really elicited a big crisis in my mind,” she says, chuckling. “But I’ll get back to you. Let’s schedule it in.”

“It was a horrible, horrible thing and I tried to get him caught. And that was my brother.”

All three actors first met when working on That ’70s Show together in the early 2000s, with Mila and Ashton getting married in 2015 and remaining good friends with their costar.

In May, Danny was found guilty of drugging two women before raping them at the height of his fame on the Fox series.

Earlier this month, a judge sentenced him to 30 years to life in prison, and just days later it was revealed that the judge had received over 50 letters asking for leniency.

Two of these letters came from Ashton and Mila, and they both surfaced on the internet on Friday.

In his letter, Ashton called Danny a “role model,” and said that he doesn’t believe that his long-time friend “is an ongoing harm to society.” Asking the judge to consider a lesser sentence, Ashton said that Danny’s daughter being "raised without a present father would [be] a tertiary injustice in and of itself."

In Mila’s letter, she told the judge that she can “wholeheartedly vouch for Danny Masterson’s exceptional character and the tremendous positive influence he has had on me and the people around him.” She also praised his “dedication to leading a drug-free life” and called him “an outstanding role model and friend.”

People were horrified to learn of Ashton and Mila’s quiet support for Danny amid his crimes, and as the criticism grew online the couple uploaded an apology video to Ashton’s Instagram account.

In the post, the two stars appear somber as they insist that they truly “support victims.” They also say that they wrote the letters to “represent the person that we knew for 25 years” after Danny’s family asked them to.

Ashton adds that the letters "were intended for the judge to read and not to undermine the testimony of the victims or retraumatize them in any way."

Others have argued that there is no justification for the letters and — regardless of how good a friend Danny has been to them personally over the years — Ashton and Mila should never have supported a convicted rapist.

And one person who agrees with that sentiment is comedian Kathy Griffin, who took to her TikTok page this week to share her own experience of somebody who was close to her committing heinous crimes.

Kathy explained that her older brother, Ken Griffin, was a pedophile and also physically abusive towards his partners. She called the police on him multiple times in a desperate bid to get him arrested.

“OK, I’m weighing in on the whole Danny Masterson, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis thing,” Kathy began. “The notion that this guy was also convicted of drugging these women, that is such serious stuff that I don’t really care that when they were working on That ‘70s Show he was a good guy to work with.”

“My brother, who’s now dead, his name was Ken Griffin, was a pedophile,” she went on. “It was a horrible, horrible thing and I tried to get him caught. And that was my brother, so I don’t want to hear about Ashton and Mila and Giovanni Ribisi and people that feel like they had to stick up for Danny Masterson because he was their bro, he was their buddy.”

“This was my own brother, and two of his girlfriends confessed to me he also physically abused them very violently and I called the LAPD about it twice,” Kathy said.

She then explained that Ken was a super of a building, which gave him access to his victims because he had keys to every unit. Kathy claimed that he molested a boy and a girl, and while he did go to prison for “something else” he was never convicted for these crimes.

“This has been something that caused a giant rift within my family,” she added. “For many years I was shunned from my own family because I was trying to get my brother Ken arrested.”

Kathy also said that it has “always haunted” her that she was ultimately unable to stop Ken, because the LAPD told her that unless he confessed or one of the children reported him then there was nothing that they could do.

“I think about those children every day, and I think about other victims he probably had,” she shared. “And the difficulty in getting a conviction in SA cases… The bar is so high that I tend to absolutely believe the victims when there’s even a trial.”

“I could never do anything about my brother and I felt so helpless,” Kathy concluded. “The point is, blood was not thicker than water in my case. And if you know that somebody is committing SA, you should do something if you can. My god, at least try.”

Kathy’s video has been viewed over a million times since she posted it, and she has been widely praised for her honesty amid such a difficult topic.

“Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing this ❤️❤️❤️” one person commented on the TikTok. Another added: “That takes a lot of courage and you did the right thing.”

“I can’t imagine the conflicting emotions you experienced with your brother. I’m so sorry,” one more said. Someone else wrote: “The right thing is not always the easy thing. thank you for standing up for victims.”

Another user said: “Thank you for using your platform for good and thanks for sharing your story! It means so much to so many.”

This isn’t the first time that Kathy has discussed Ken, with the star previously opening up about him in her 2009 memoir.

During an appearance on the Tyra Banks Show to promote the book that same year, Kathy said that Ken was 20 years older than her and would crawl into her bed when she was a child.

“When I was a little tiny kid, six or seven years old, he’d come and crawl into bed with me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear and stuff that was creepy,” she shared. “Many, many, many women had a much more difficult time than I did.”

She said that she became “estranged” from him when “a couple of separate women” told her that he was a pedophile — and it created a huge divide in the family.

“It became a difficult thing for me and my family,” Kathy explained. “I told my parents I wasn’t going to come to Christmas until he would leave and stuff like that, it put them in a tough position.” Kathy added that the rest of her family struggled to understand the way that she felt about Ken because they were in “denial” and wanted “proof” of the allegations.

Eventually, her dad confronted Ken directly, and he apparently responded to the pedophile accusations by simply saying: “I do what I do.” While Kathy didn’t see her brother “for many years,” she did visit him in hospital shortly before his death because her mom asked her to go and say goodbye while he was “brain dead.”

“I was actually frightened of him until the day he died,” she told Tyra. Kathy isn’t the only high profile name to speak out against Ashton and Mila’s actions, with Christina Ricci responding to the scandal by posting on her Instagram story that “people we have loved and admired" can also do "horrible things" and that "people we know as ‘awesome guys’ can be predators and abusers."

She added at the time: “Unfortunately, I’ve known lots of ‘awesome guys’ who were lovely to me who have been proven to be abusers privately.” Mila and Ashton have not publicly commented on the situation since uploading their apology video. I f you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE, which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

"Pawn Stars" cast member Corey Harrison had bloodshot eyes, a blank stare, and reeked like booze during his DUI traffic stop ... so says the cop who busted the reality star.

TMZ broke the story, Harrison was arrested for DUI early Friday morning in Vegas on his way home. According to the police report, obtained by TMZ, Corey was driving his white Ford F250 pickup and unable to maintain his lane ... at times swerving into the bike lane.

Cops say when they pulled Corey over and made contact, he smelled like booze and had bloodshot eyes, but explained his truck sometimes pulls to the right.

The report states officers gave Corey a field sobriety test and asked he provide a blood or breath sample. When Corey allegedly replied he should "probably ask for his lawyer" the officer informed him they'd get a search warrant for his blood, and if he did refuse his driver's license would be revoked.

Corey eventually agreed to provide a breath sample, but the report states the breathalyzer at the jail was broken, so Corey allowed his blood to be drawn. The report does not state the results of the blood sample, but Corey was booked for DUI.

We spoke to Corey Friday, hours after his arrest who also informed us of the busted breathalyzer. Corey told us he'd recently flown back into town after a trip to Minnesota, but only had one drink on the flight ... 7 hours before his arrest.

It was a rare case of “out of the fire and into the Friars.”

Jimmy Fallon apologized to his staff this week after a Rolling Stone exposé claimed that he’d created a toxic environment at the 30 Rock HQ of his “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” — in part because he seemed to have shown up to the office smelling of booze back in 2017.

But Page Six has heard over the years that Fallon, 48 — who had a legendary reputation for drinking, and occasionally getting into high-spirited scrapes, at downtown watering holes including Niagara, and especially the long-defunct Siberia — used the private Friars Club as a safe space for the gregarious host to let his hair down without making the gossip pages.

While the struggling 55th Street club is famed for its celebrity members — who, generally speaking, happily drank among the other members at the various bars around its clubhouse — we’re told Fallon was often ensconced in rooms that were especially closed off from other card-carrying folks, with his writing staff as party pals.

As this reporter once discovered the hard way, anyone not in the NBC fold was told to take a hike.

In fact, it was much speculated around the hallowed halls once walked by Frank Sintra and Jerry Lewis, that NBC brass were the ones who came up with the Jimmy management strategy.

But on Friday an NBC spokesperson told Page Six that was not true. A spokesperson for Fallon declined to comment.

A Friars’ insider told us, “He did bring his writers to the club and they’d have a private room, but I don’t know if that was organic, as he’d hang out there anyway — he gifted the writers annual memberships so it makes sense that’s where they’d hang —or if NBC encouraged it. Could have been a win-win for both.”

Fallon is under fire after a Rolling Stone article quoted 16 current and former employees accused him of being erratic, drunk at work and “creating a toxic work environment.”

“Nobody told Jimmy, ‘No,’” a staffer told the magazine.

“Everybody walked on eggshells, especially showrunners,” another former employee said.

“You never knew which Jimmy we were going to get and when he was going to throw a hissy fit. Look how many showrunners went so quickly. We know they didn’t last long.”

Fallon offered an apology to “Tonight Show” in a Thursday night video call.

An attendee of the all-hands meeting characterized the funnyman’s mea culpa as “pretty earnest.”

“It’s embarrassing, and I feel so bad,” Fallon allegedly said. “Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends . . . I feel so bad I can’t even tell you.”

Fallon made headlines in 2014, shortly after he got the “Tonight Show” gig, for getting caught up in a scuffle at East Village bar Niagara, and we’re told the alleged retreat behind Friars lines happened shortly after.

But the Friar’s Club closed this past spring — so where will the funnyman hide out now?

“Poor Things,” a film about Victorian-era female empowerment, has won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival

ROME -- ROME (AP) — “Poor Things,” a film about Victorian-era female empowerment, won the Golden Lion on Saturday at a Venice Film Festival largely deprived of Hollywood glamour because of the writers and actors strikes.

The film, starring Emma Stone, won the top prize at the 80th edition of the festival, which is often a predictor of Oscar glory. Receiving the award, director Yorgos Lanthimos said the film wouldn’t exist without Stone, who was also a producer but was not on the Lido for the festival.

“This film is her, in front and behind the camera,” Lanthimos said.

The film, based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, tells the tale of Bella Baxter, who is brought back to life by a scientist and, after a whirlwind learning curve, runs off with a sleazy lawyer and embarks on a series of adventures devoid of the societal judgements of the era.

Other top winners on the Lido were two films shaming Europe for its migration policies.

“Io Capitano,” (Me Captain) by Matteo Garrone, won the award for best director while Garrone’s young star, Seydou Sarr, won the award for best young actor. The film tells the story of two young boys’ odyssey from Dakar, Senegal, to the detention camps in Libya and finally across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border,” about Europe’s other migration crisis on the Polish-Belarus border, won the Special Jury Prize.

“People are still hiding in forests, deprived of their dignity, of their human rights, of their safety, and some of them will lose their lives here in Europe,” Holland told the audience. “Not because we don’t have the resources to help them but because we don’t want to.”

Peter Sarsgaard won best actor for “Memory,” in which he co-stars with Jessica Chastain in a film about high schoolers reuniting. In his acceptance speech, Sarsgaard referred to the strike and artificial intelligence and the threat it poses to the industry and beyond.

“I think we could all really agree that an actor is a person and that a writer is a person. But it seems that we can’t," he said. "And that’s terrifying because this work we do is about connection. And without that, this animated space between us, this sacrament, this holy experience of being human, will be handed over to the machines and the eight billionaires that own them."

Cailee Spaeny won best actress for “Priscilla,” Sofia Coppola's portrait of the private side of Priscilla and Elvis Presley.

The jury was headed by Damien Chazelle and included Saleh Bakri, Jane Campion, Mia Hansen-Løve, Gabriele Mainetti, Martin McDonagh, Santiago Mitre, Laura Poitras and Shu Qi.