Commercial Roof Repair in Hollywood, SC

Before the Primetime Emmys are awarded Monday night, the Creative Arts Emmy were held last weekend, and Anderson's own Chadwick Boseman won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for his role in the Disney+ and Marvel Studios animated show "What If...?"

On the show, Boseman voices his "Black Panther" character T'Challa where he becomes Star Lord, a character in an alternate universe from "Guardians of the Galaxy."

Boseman remembered:A year after his death, Chadwick Boseman remembered by hometown of Anderson

The Academy Award nominee from Anderson, a T.L. Hanna High graduate, died tragically young at the age of 40 after a battle with colon cancer.

His wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the Emmy on his behalf.

"When I learned that Chad was nominated for this award, I started thinking about everything that was going on when he was recording — everything that was going on in the world and in our world and just being in such awe of his commitment and his dedication," Ledward said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And what a beautifully aligned moment it really is that one of the last things he would work on would not only be revisiting a character that was so important to him and his career and to the world, but also that it be an exploration of something new, diving into a new potential future — particularly with everything he spoke about purpose and finding the reason that you are here on the planet on this very time.

"You can’t understand your purpose unless you’re willing to ask, ‘What if,’ unless you’re willing to say, ‘What if the universe is conspiring in my favor, what if it’s me?'”

Greenville's Alrinthea Carter, meanwhile, was nominated in Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for her work on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show." Writers for HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" won that award.

Greenville native J. Smith Cameron is nominated in the category of Outstanding Drama Series for her role in the HBO series "Succession." That award is due to be presented Monday night as the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards air at 8 p.m. on Sept. 12 on NBC-TV.

Emmy nomination:Emmy nod goes to Greenville writer who wanted to be cross of Oprah and Christiane Amanpour

More local flavor at the Emmys:Greenville actress receives nod for Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

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– A.J. Jackson is a general-assignment reporter for the Independent Mail. Contact him by email at ajackson@gannett.com with story ideas and leads, also follow him on Twitter @AJhappened.

Brendan Fraser is officially on a comeback.

The Whale, a new Darren Aronofsky film in which Fraser stars, premiered at the Venice Film Festival Sunday night to a six-minute standing ovation.

Actors and longtime fans alike took to social media to share their own happiness at the recognition Fraser received with this latest role. As the applause continued for Fraser on Sunday, the actor and some audience members appeared to get choked up.

This comes years after Fraser was at the height of his career. So, why has this moment has brought so many people joy at the same time that others lament the fact that this film is Fraser's return to stardom?

Fraser was once a major star with hits such as George of the Jungle and The Mummy franchise. But after a sustained run as one of Hollywood's leading men, Fraser receded to the sidelines of TV and film in recent years.

Seeing Fraser who was so "universally loved" by the public for so long receive praise resonated with fans, according to film and media historian Chris Yogerst.

"It's almost like the public was just waiting for this moment," said Yogerst. "Everyone has missed him. Seeing him back on the screen, it was like an old friend was back."

Nostalgia certainly plays into the joy this moment brings to some people, Yogerst said.

"I mean, I'm still nostalgic about the silly remake of Bedazzled," a Fraser movie with Elizabeth Hurley that came out in 2000, Yogerst said.

Part of this collective happiness also stems from knowledge of Fraser's recent struggles, according to Nicholas Baer, an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

After Fraser was absent from any big Hollywood movie for several years, GQ published a profile in 2018 of the actor titled, "What ever happened to Brendan Fraser?"

In it, Fraser discussed years of suffering from injuries (sustained from performing stunts during filming of The Mummy franchise), subsequent surgeries, personal loss and a divorce. Most startling were details Fraser shared of being allegedly groped by Philip Berk, a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Berk told GQ that Fraser's account was "a total fabrication."

Fraser in the GQ article openly questioned whether he was actually blacklisted from Hollywood because he came forward about his experience.

"[The Whale] is offering us an opportunity to kind of recognize the virtue and the kind of fundamental decency of Brendan Fraser, who has been really wronged by the industry and has long suffered," Baer said.

The Whale is about a reclusive English teacher (Fraser) who weighs 600 pounds, and as he struggles with his health, tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. A combination of prosthetics and CGI help Fraser as he portrays this character.

Fraser's return will likely be controversial for some, Baer noted.

"I think it's definitely going to be a point of contention in the discourse. I think it's a practice [the use of prosthetics or so-called fat suits] that has been relatively commonplace among major Hollywood actors for a long time and that's been increasingly criticized for being fat phobic and offensive," Baer said.

Indeed, critics have turned to social media to say that the movie's premise is inherently dehumanizing. There's a question of whether it should have been made at all.

Aubrey Gordon, an author and co-host of the Maintenance Phase, a podcast focused on debunking health fads, took to Twitter to call out the movie's aim.

"It's so telling that so many only see fat people as 'humanized' in media that shows us doing exactly what they expect: living short, small lives; 'eating ourselves to death'; feeling sad & regretful. All reminders of how tragic it is to be fat, and how superior it is to be thin," she wrote.

This kind of media just "reinforces viewers' anti-fat bias," she wrote.

Pia Glenn, a Broadway actress, also criticized the movie, lamenting the fact that this film is Fraser's comeback.

"Mr. Fraser's 'comeback' and personal journey as an actor and human are significant and I hate that I feel so negatively about the project that brought them about. I know I won't see it, so I've been reading reviews," she wrote on Twitter. "References to rolls and hanging flesh and Jabba the Hut (!) NO."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Advocates, Careers, Leadership

In her second children’s book, "Oh, No… Hacked Again!," Zinet Kemal, now also a cloud security engineer at Best Buy, writes about Elham, an 8-year-old girl who gets locked out of her favorite online game.

Elham has to lean on her mom, who as the book unfolds, explains to Elham the basics of online cybersecurity.

“The whole point in the book is that the mother in the story saves the day and she's someone who looks like me, a Black woman who's wearing a hijab and works in the cybersecurity industry,” said Kemal, who juggles four kids and a husband while pursuing degree after degree in cybersecurity.

Kemal said during the pandemic, she noticed how her children were spending more time both online gaming and for educational purposes. With that exposure, Kemal saw two of her children’s gaming accounts get hacked on more than one occasion, the events that inspired the book.

“I wanted to teach kids about online safety,” Kemal said. “As parents when we are setting our kids up with games, online safety does not come top-of-mind. I also felt it was important to take on the Hollywood myth that cybersecurity people are people in hoodies working in a dark basement.”

Click here for full coverage of the 2022 Women in IT Security.

Kemal also serves as a community outreach director for the organization, Black Girls in Cyber. She wants young people to know that cybersecurity is a very diverse field and that it doesn’t require someone to excel in computer science and math.

“The industry needs people who are analytical, who can work in compliance or maybe as ethical hackers where they are working on red team,” Kemal said. “When people talk about the challenges the industry faces, ransomware and malware always comes up, but the shortage of cyber talent is always mentioned.”

As a cloud security engineer at Best Buy, she focuses on keeping data safe as Best Buy makes its migration to the cloud and relies less on a centralized data center. “We make sure that as the company makes the transition, that the cloud data is kept safe for the Best Buy staff and also protect the company’s reputation by keeping customer data safe,” Kemal said.

The O.C. fans rejoiced on Monday when they were gifted with a Cooper family reunion! Melinda Clarke, who played the role of Julie Cooper on the FOX teen drama, took to Instagram to share a photo of her posing with her TV husband, Tate Donovan, who played Jimmy Cooper, and TV daughter, Mischa Barton, who played Marissa Cooper, during a hangout in Charleston, SC. “SO THIS HAPPENED! Cooper family reunion! Warmed my heart to see these two, @mischabarton and @t8dono, at @tripleellc in Charleston. ????????@dinehighcotton #theoc,” she captioned the epic photo.

Around the same time Melinda shared her post, Mischa also took to her Instagram story to share another photo that featured Melinda, Tate, and others posing at what appeared to be a restaurant. “Ran into Gossip Girl in Charleston last night what are the chances. just kidding we were there for a reason,” she wrote along with a laughing emoji. “It was truly great to catch up with mom & dad.”

Once both the photos were posted, fans took to the comments section of Melinda’s post to share their excitement over the reunion. “OMG! This made me so happy!” one fan exclaimed while another shared, “THIS SAVED MY ENTIRE YEAR!” A third called the photo “seriously iconic” and a fourth wrote, “Love the three of you so much. We missed the Cooper family.”

Before Melinda and Mischa shared their latest reunion photos, their former O.C. co-star Adam Brody made headlines for commenting on a possible future reboot of the show, which originally aired from 2003 until 2007. “I kind of don’t think it can be done because socially we’re in a different place and we’re in a more conscious place,” he said on Melinda and other O.C. co-star Rachel Bilson‘s podcast, Welcome to the OC, Bitches in Oct. 2021. “While The O.C. claims to be — in a similar sense as a Gossip Girl — while it would sort of say it’s a critique, it’s not. It’s a celebration — it’s a celebration of affluence in my opinion.”

“For me, in a post-Donald Trump America to go, ‘Let’s go back to Orange County,’ I feel like you have to have a real reckoning politically and socially, and is that what people want to see with this show? I don’t know,” he added. “And is there a way to do both? There is, I suppose, but in my eyes, I probably want to torch it more than the fans would want.”

Shane Beamer’s squad is getting the Hollywood treatment.

The Gamecocks are being featured on a five-part ESPN documentary series entitled “Welcome Home: South Carolina Football.”

The State chatted with Bo Mattingly, the show’s executive producer and president of Sport & Story, about how the series came to be and what viewers can expect from the final four installments — the next of which airs at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length

Ben Portnoy: First off, can you elaborate a little on how this documentary series came to be?

Bo Mattingly: “Yeah, I think South Carolina had a desire to showcase the football program and the way that it is now under Coach Beamer. There’s a lot of positives in terms of who he is, how he runs his program. I think we saw that on the field last year. There was a desire to really showcase that.

I’ve got a background of being able to work with schools and networks — mostly ESPN — to help bring something like that to life. So we just started the conversation and started talking about what that might look like, what the process is. We just reached out to ESPN and met with South Carolina to talk about what it would look like. There was mutual interest and we were able to put a deal together that works for everybody.

The access has been tremendous. Coach (Beamer) has been tremendous. The athletic department, everybody there, it’s just been awesome to deal with. I think you probably saw in the first episode the access and what it looks like, but the idea is to show you what it looks like to play football at South Carolina under Shane Beamer.”

BP: You kind of touched on it there, but why was South Carolina the program you wanted to do this kind of project with?

BM: “I think there’s a lot of intrigue around Coach Beamer. He’s been around for a long time. Sort of a well-known coach and then he took a job in South Carolina. The energy and the part where you maybe have heard about this guy, but you don’t really know as much about him as maybe some other coaches — there’s an entry to ‘OK, who is this guy? What is he all about?’

Then you’ve got Spencer Rattler, who’s obviously one of the most high-profile names from a quarterback perspective in college football. Then you have some players coming back and you’ve got characters.

South Carolina is an SEC program that feels like it’s on the rise. It’s not just your average, everyday story. Any football program — like a major college football program — you’re gonna be able to find and tell great stories. But this just felt like it had some really intriguing edges to it. And then when you get in there and you start talking to them, it just becomes clear that that’s true.

It’s been fun just to see how they operate and the sort of the uniqueness of the program.”

BP: And then in terms of actually putting this documentary together, what does that look like in practice?

BM: “Normally we’ll have a crew of two or three people — not a huge crew. It just depends.

We had more people at the spring game. We had a lot of guys mic’d up. But then (USC creative media director) Justin King and his staff at South Carolina are as good as anybody in the country when it comes to creative and video and storytelling.

Most of their work is for social (media) and the way that social video gets edited is different than long form. There’s all this footage that they’ve done a great job with from day one, since Coach Beamer has been there and even before. And then you really just sort of marry those two things and build it for what’s appropriate for this setting, this long form, documentary setting.

From a crew size standpoint, it’s not overwhelming. And because South Carolina is so good at what they do, it makes it even a better project, in my opinion.”

BP: Now that the first episode has aired, what’s the reception been like so far?

BM: “We’re just getting started. You kind of lay the groundwork. Some of the characters on the team — and everyone on the team is a character — but in a TV series, you can’t feature every person. There’s a handful of characters that we’ll get to know better as the series goes on.

And then we’re going to show sort of behind the scenes — what you don’t get to see every day as a fan. You see them play the game. You might see him practice. But you don’t really know what goes into all the work behind the scenes and the attention to detail, the conditioning, the nutrition, the science of what they do. And then the planning — the strategy from the coaches on how they’re going to attack a practice. We’re gonna get that.

Then, really, you’re gonna just sort of go through fall camp and see the grind of fall camp, what it’s like to go through all that. And then we’ll go through that first game week and that’ll be the final episode that will come out after the first game (against Georgia State).”

BP: In that vein, what can people expect from the last four episodes?

BM: “What I hope is that we’re able to show things that you haven’t seen before if you’re a South Carolina fan, or you’re a college football fan.

I don’t know that we’ve ever seen eight guys mic’d up in a game like we did in the spring game. You’re literally watching and hearing the conversation. When you watch a game, it’s just cool to hear that, right? Because normally you’re watching and you kind of wonder what somebody’s saying. You kind of feel like you’re inside the game.

And then off the field, we want to show who these guys are as people. They’re people. I feel like we’ve lost this a little bit, is humanizing these athletes. They’re just people. They just happen to be really good at football. They wear a face mask and you don’t really get to know them. I feel like when you do (get to know them), you just watch games differently. You’re sort of invested in their story, who they are — especially if you’re a fan. You’re rooting for them in a more authentic and meaningful way.

I hope that we’re able to show that and I genuinely think a lot and have a lot of respect for Coach Beamer — who he is, how he runs programs, his character and the kind of guy he is trying to build guys beyond just football, which is so much more sustainable than the few years that that he’s gonna have them there. Hopefully, people see that.

But, also, it’s real storytelling. It’s the good and the bad. Not everything’s roses. And you see the grind and that it can be tough, and there’s some adversity. Hopefully, those are some things that come out.

Not only is it something that I think is great look at the South Carolina football program, but the impact that football, or sports in general, can be positive. I think that’s going to come out in this series.”

BP: To that end, what are one or two things you want people to take away from this series in its entirety?

BM: “That’s a good question. I think, for me, it would just be getting to know what it’s like to play major college football better — seeing the work that goes into it and the rewards that can come out of it.

And then what it’s like to play college football for Shane Beamer and the South Carolina Gamecocks. Whether you’re a fan, whether you’re just somebody who enjoys college football, or if you just want to see how this works, those are things that I think people will get out of the series.”

When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Sept. 7

TV: ESPNU

Stream: ESPN app

Length: 30 mins