The Reason Your Agent Isn’t Calling You Back? Pickleball
If you happened to be passing through Calabasas and heard a loud “twocking” sound, we can explain. On Nov. 16, a slew of Hollywood’s most powerful players (and, in this case, we’re using the word literally) assembled on the courts of the Calabasas Pickleball Club for the Entertainment Pickleball League’s championship tourney. Although they began just a few months ago, EPL’s games are quickly shaping up to be Hollywood’s biggest draw this side of the Academy Gala, with agents and execs from just about every entertainment company forming squads — most with pun-filled names like Disney’s Monster Dinks, NBCUni’s Dis-Pickleball Me and CAA’s Dill Makers — to participate. “We started with four teams,” says Zee Batal, the TV producer who launched the league in late
Related Stories
September with reality TV showrunner Erica Hanson. “Now we have eight. By January, we’ll have 16. Everyone from Amazon to Roku to Sony.” According to Hanson, part of the league’s appeal is the chance for members to meet professional rivals in a way that doesn’t involve stealing one another’s clients. “It’s fantastic to see this sense of community and connecting,” she says. Batal, for one, believes there’s no limit to how big the sport can become in Hollywood, suggesting it’s already replaced golf and tennis as the preferred backdrop for negotiation. “It’s just easier to do business on the pickleball court,” he says. “It’s more social, not as stuffy. If tennis is like boxing, then pickleball is like MMA fighting.” As for the recent tournament, congratulations to the Gersh agency’s team, Let’s F*cking Gersh, which beat Netflix’s Netflix and Dill for the championship.
Want to Get Married in the Brady House? It Could Happen!
L.A. is no stranger to obsession — but at least Tina Trahan has a groovy one. The 54-year-old art collector, ex-wife of former Starz and HBO chief Chris Albrecht, purchased the Brady Bunch home about a year ago for $3.2 million from HGTV after the network gutted and renovated the interior to look like the sets on the show, chronicled on A Very Brady Renovation. In the months since, Trahan has compulsively filled the house with every painting, knickknack, book cover and random prop featured on the classic sitcom. “I’ve added over 300 Easter eggs,” says Trahan — everything from Safe detergent boxes to green paper towels to the Bradys’ three vehicles (a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda, ’71 Plymouth satellite station wagon and ’73 Caprice Classic convertible), which are parked outside. The only thing left for Trahan to figure out is what to do with the place. So far, she’s come up with a contest, The Brady Experience, which will fly five winners to L.A. next year to tour the home and eat “pork chops and applesauce” with such Brady Bunch castmembers as Barry Williams (Greg) and Christopher Knight (Peter), with proceeds going to No Kid Hungry. Trahan is mulling other offers, like the guy who said he’d pay her $5,000 for an hour inside the house. Then there’s the idea to host weddings on the property (Williams has graciously volunteered to officiate). “They say it’s the second-most-photographed house in America outside of the White House,” Knight tells THR. But as far as we know, the White House doesn’t use Safe detergent. — SETH ABRAMOVITCH
Has the Unity Started Yet? Stars Get Hammered for Their Votes
The election may be over, but here in Hollywood the vote-shaming is just getting started. Celebrities on both sides of the aisle are finding themselves dealing with withering online attacks for supporting their candidates of choice, even when it turns out they didn’t vote for them. For starters, MAGA world is demanding a boycott of Disney’s upcoming Snow White reboot because the actress cast in the title role, Rachel Zegler, dared to post that she was “shocked” and “heartbroken” over the election results, concluding her thoughts with a perhaps inelegant “Fuck Donald Trump.” (Of course, right-wingers have been fuming over Snow White since Disney named the Latino actress as its lead back in 2021.) On the other side of the divide, left-wingers went after Family Ties actress Justine Bateman for her post-election tweet saying that she was “decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.” Although Bateman has declined to reveal whom she voted for, followers of her feeds couldn’t have been entirely shocked by her seeming support of Trump; between warnings about the dangers of AI, she’s lately been railing against woke culture. What was shocking to some, though, was that Bateman’s post was liked by Reed Morano, a director on the Trumpy dystopian Hulu drama The Handmaid’s Tale. Morano’s friendly click stirred enough online toxicity that she felt compelled to post a photo of her actual ballot proving that she voted for Kamala Harris (she’s since deleted the post). Finally, at least for now, there was the drama surrounding Broadway star Nicole Scherzinger, who made the alleged mistake of liking comedian Russell Brand’s IG post of a MAGA-looking red cap emblazoned with the words, “Make Jesus First Again.” (Brand, who is facing allegations of sexual assault, recently converted to Christianity.) “Many presumptions are being drawn, which do not reflect who I am, what I stand for, or who I voted for,” the former Pussycat Doll posted in an apology for her positive remarks about Brand’s headgear. “Like so many others, in times of adversity and uncertainty, I turn to my faith. I believe that the posts I engaged with were about encouraging people to choose love and faith.”
This story appeared in the Nov. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
