Deon Cole hosted the NAACP Image Award at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday, February 28, and opened his monologue with a joke about the racial slur mishap at the BAFTAs recently.

The 54-year-old comedian and actor jokingly prayed to God, saying, “Lord, before we go, if there are any white men out here in the audience with Tourette’s, I advise you to tell them they better read the room tonight, Lord. It might not go the way they thinketh. Whatever medicine they’re on, they better double up on it, Lord.

Cole referred to the controversy about Tourette’s activist John Davidson shouting a racial slur while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presented an award on stage.

The Average Joe star also joked about Nicki Minaj and her recent political alliance with the MAGA movement, saying, “Lord, we want you to bless our sister Nicki Minaj. She’s been going through a lot lately and hasn’t been herself, Lord,” joking that her cosmetic injections have been “affecting her brain.”

NAACP Awards stand for National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and celebrate the arts across different mediums including films, theatre, music, and literature, created every year.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal are one of the most famous Hollywood siblings, yet fans are still surprised to learn they’re related.

In a new interview with The New York Times published February 28, the Oscar-nominated actress opened up about reuniting with her younger brother on-screen for her upcoming second directorial project, The Bride — marking their first time sharing the screen in over two decades.

“I remember asking him and tearing up alone in this hotel room I was in, because it meant so much to me. It meant so much for me to interact with him,” Maggie, 48, recalled, noting that for years, she had been focused on carving her own path “separate” from her famous family.

“We’ve never been estranged,” Maggie said of the Marvel star, “but we’ve never been as close as we are now. We’re finally, maybe in the last five years, more and more and more, even each day, really interacting…”

Both siblings began acting as children in the early ’90s with supporting roles in their dad’s films, and the last time they worked together was on the 2001 thriller Donnie Darko. Jake, now 45, quickly landed leading roles in films like October Sky — something Maggie now admits evoked feelings of “envy” towards her brother.

Hence, reaching out to him after all these years felt “honest” and “vulnerable.” The Dark Knight actress told NYT, “I waited until I was absolutely sure that asking him to do this part was the right thing to do.” 

There’s a line from an old movie that says no man is a failure who has friends, and by that reasoning, meet the most successful man in town: Marc Shaiman, the legendary composer, Tony-, Grammy- and Emmy-winner, and a guy with friends like Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Steve Martin who’d brave a New York snowstorm to see him. 

The event, held a few weeks ago at the legendary New York City restaurant Sardi’s, was a book party for Shaiman’s new memoir, “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner” (Regalo Press) And with close to 50 years in the business, he has had a few things to be happy about.

For starters, Shaiman has scored some of the best-loved films of a generation (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “Sister Act,” “City Slickers”), and scored seven Oscar nominations along the way, one of them for the music from the movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.” He also played the young news theme writer in the 1987 film “Broadcast News.”

Shaiman wrote the music for the hit Broadway musical “Hairspray,” and won a Tony along with his writing partner (and former life partner) Scott Wittman.

And back at Sardi’s, it seemed everyone in the room had a favorite Marc Shaiman musical moment. 

“I loved Marc before I ever knew him,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda, “because I was the species of theater kid that memorized Billy Crystal’s musical montages on the Oscars. And many years later, I learned that Marc wrote those with Billy: It’s a wonderful night for Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, who will winnnnn?”

As the creator of some of the most memorable music on stage and screen, it’s no surprise that Shaiman is most at home behind a piano. “I love a piano,” he said. “I love that we have a piano here. It’s truly part of my body, and heart, and soul. It really is. Always has been.”

I asked, “Do you feel differently sitting at the piano than you do in other parts of your life?”

“I feel at home here, yeah,” Shaiman said. “And onstage. I’m a ham. I feel more at home onstage than really anywhere.”

Born 66 years ago in New Jersey, Shaiman was a piano prodigy who left home at 16, bound for the big city. “My mother said that people were telling her, ‘What do you mean, you’re letting him move to New York?’ But she said, ‘What am I gonna do, chain him to the piano?'”

After a few years playing in New York clubs, he became the music director for one of his idols, the legendary Bette Midler, before getting a job at “Saturday Night Live.”  “I got to co-create the Sweeney Sisters, which were two lounge-singing girls who did long medleys,” he said. “Talk about cheesy show business!”

He also met people there who would become lifelong friends, like Martin Short and Billy Crystal.  “That was what ‘Saturday Night Live’ gave me, those friendships. And then Billy Crystal is the one who introduced me to Rob Reiner.

“Working with Rob was just the greatest. Billy asked him on ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ ‘What are you thinking about for the music?’ And Rob said, ‘I need a guy who, like, knows every song in the American Songbook.’ And Billy mentioned, ‘Have I got a guy for you!'”

The finished film was a hit, in part because of Shaiman’s musical arrangements, and Reiner asked him to score his next project, the 1990 thriller “Misery,” even though that was uncharted territory for Shaiman. “Even my own agent said, ‘Rob, what makes you think Marc can do this?’ And Rob said, ‘Richard, talent is talent.’ I had to live up to his faith in me.”

Shaiman went on to score more than a dozen of Reiner’s films, a golden Hollywood winning streak that might’ve continued, until the unthinkable happened in December, when Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were murdered in their home.

“It was Billy Crystal who texted me, ‘Call me,'” Shaiman recalled. “And I could just sense from the two words, something’s not right. And I called him, and he told me what had happened. And I was in shock. And I’m really still in shock.”

One of the scores Shaiman is most proud of was for the 1995 film “The American President.” Reiner made a film that was poignant and inspiring, and Shaiman’s music captures not only the spirit of the film, but of the dear friend who made it.

Shaiman says it’s been a rough couple of months, but he’s working through it.  

He calls himself a cynic. But he has an equally clear sense of just how lucky he’s been. And despite the title of his book – “Never Mind the Happy” – he says he has a lot to be happy about. “The way people kept saying, ‘Marc, don’t give up.’ And it’s true! I just had this endless amount of dreams coming true. I am proof that if you just keep showing up, keep saying yes, that everything you could’ve ever dreamt of can happen.”     

READ AN EXCERPT: “Never Mind the Happy” by Marc Shaiman

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Marc Shaiman (Video)

     
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.