Entertainment
William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson: When stars collide
Not long ago in Seattle, an astronomical event of sorts happened: Two superstars collided. William Shatner, of “Star Trek” fame, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s favorite astrophysicist, took to the stage to explore the nature of exploration. Think of it as sort of Martin & Lewis, but with more quantum mechanics.
“It’s a bromance,” said Tyson. “I think what Bill Shatner and I have together should be the textbook definition of the bromance.”
“If we have a bromance,” said Shatner, “I’d be very privileged.”
The two grew close last year on an upscale cruise to Antarctica, where they ended up being the after-dinner entertainment. “The organizer said, ‘Why don’t we put the two of you on this mini-stage that they have on the ship, and we just chew the fat?'” said Tyson. “And then the organizer said, ‘Why don’t you guys take this on the road?'”
Their first port of call? Seattle, where they debuted a wide-ranging, sometimes meandering, but always intriguing stage show they’re calling “The Universe Is Absurd!”
CBS News
When Shatner asked his partner for a sound bite, deGrasse Tyson solicited a suggestion from the audience: “Pick anything out of the universe. Go. Anything. Doesn’t matter.”
“Pluto!” yelled one enthusiastic audience member.
DeGrasse Tyson obliged: “More than half of Pluto is made of ice, so that, if it were where Earth is right now, heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would grow a tail. And that is no kind of behavior for a planet!” Mic drop. “That’s a sound bite!”
For deGrasse Tyson, director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, and an authority on just about everything we know about the universe, it’s a chance to get inside the insatiably curious mind of the 94-year-old Shatner. “What kind of magic potion is he drinking?” deGrasse Tyson laughed. “By the way, you can do the math, he’s been alive for three billion seconds, okay? I did the math, you don’t have to. So when Bill Shatner speaks, it’s coming from a place way deeper than any of the rest of us can possibly match.”
And for Shatner, who never formally studied astrophysics, it’s a chance to make up for what he sees as lost time. “I feel bad about it, because that knowledge of what constitutes the construction of nature, we know so little, but the little we know is so awesome, it’s so spellbinding,” he said. “The fact that I wasn’t conscious of how spellbinding it is as a youth, I could have been much more educated about it.”
CBS News 
Four years ago, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go into space, and he’s been globetrotting ever since.
Shatner asked deGrasse Tyson, “Do you still scratch your head in awe?”
“Every night I look up,” he replied.
So, is this the dynamic between the two – Shatner with questions, deGrasse Tyson with answers? “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is,” Shatner replied.
“No, but he’s got wisdom and life experience that I value, and I respect,” deGrasse Tyson added. “So, I’m here to grab some of that.”
As for Shatner’s take on deGrasse Tyson, “He has access, both because of his mentality, and the books and the studies, so he’s into modern-day mysticism, which is the study of the stars and how it works and what goes on.”
“You call that modern-day mysticism?” deGrasse Tyson asked.
“Because you don’t know for sure that what you’re saying is absolutely truth until more experimentation.”
“That’s the frontier. We’re scratching our heads.”
“Exactly,” said Shatner. “So, he is an explorer. He is an explorer. He is on that verge. He teaches that. And it is mystical in every sense of the word.”
I asked, “This is where I think you are politely and respectfully in disagreement, because Dr. deGrasse Tyson will say something like, ‘We know what the speed of light is and what the fastest things can move is.’ And you say, ‘Well, we’ll see about that!'”
“Yeah, we’ve had that argument,” said Shatner.
DeGrasse Tyson seems just fine not knowing everything – for example, what was going on before the Big Bang, and the profound idea of somethingness coming from nothingness. “We don’t know. Next question!” he said. “No, as a scientist, you need to be comfortable in the presence of a question that does not yet have an answer.”
Of course, the ultimate question, the one we really don’t know definitively, is where we go when we die, something that Shatner, as he loses friends and colleagues, finds himself considering more often. “You know, I vary between the fear of death, my fear,” he said. But, “I have so much love around me. I have a wife, and children, and grandchildren. I even have two great-grandchildren. And I have two great dogs. I’ve had dogs all my life, all my adult life. And so, all my life is fertile, is vibrant. And I don’t want to leave it. And that’s the sadness. I don’t want to go.”
“Are you curious, though, about what you will find out?” I asked.
“Not enough to die!” he laughed.
“Even your curiosity has a limit?”
“Right. It stops right there!”
So, William Shatner’s famous curiosity bumps up against the edge of his universe. And as the show wrapped up in Seattle, Shatner closed things out with one of his unique spoken-word songs, accompanied by trumpeter Keyon Harrold.
Do not grow old
no matter how long you live.
Do not forget pain
but somehow learn to forgive.
The universe, it turns out, might be a bit absurd, but what an interesting ride!
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with William Shatner and Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)
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Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Karen Brenner.
Anna Faris has opened up about the anxiety that plagued her during the making of the original Scary Movie films, admitting she spent much of the time hiding and hoping nobody would notice her, convinced she was about to lose the job.
“I remember being just so scared that I was gonna get fired because I had no body of work behind me. I didn’t even have an agent,” the actress and comedian, 49, tells PEOPLE.
Scary Movie, released in 2000, was her first major film role, and she says she was “so quiet and so intimidated in those first two movies”, spending her time on set hanging back rather than engaging with her castmates.
Things started to shift by the third instalment in 2003.
“For me, it felt like I got to pay more attention. I did get to involve myself more. I did feel comfortable making small talk and having banter and doing what normal people do as opposed to just hiding in the corner, hoping that no one will notice me,” she says.
More than two decades later, Faris is back as Cindy Campbell in Scary Movie 6, and the experience of returning could not feel more different.
When she got the call, she was “shocked and immediately thrilled.”
“I couldn’t believe that there was a world where I would be feeling so good about doing Scary Movie, not just good, but great,” she says.
The reunion has also given her the chance to do something she had never properly done before, thank the Wayans brothers for taking a chance on her all those years ago.
Marlon, Shawn and Keenen Ivory Wayans wrote, created and produced the original films.
“It’s a little healing in the sense that we got to be back together again. That is, for me, a personal celebration because I got to thank them. I’d never thanked them properly,” she says.
“It felt like the Wayans brothers were casting me. This time, I got to thank them and feel like I wasn’t gonna get fired.”
Bonnie Wright, the actress famously known for playing Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter film franchise, has revealed she is expecting her second baby.
The 35-year-old star shared the happy news with her followers on Sunday, 5 April, through a heartwarming post on Instagram.
Wright, who appeared in all eight movies of the wizarding series, confirmed that her “second little earthling” will be joining the family this autumn.
The announcement was with two sweet photos of the mother sitting on a couch with her two-year-old son, Elio Ocean Wright Lococo.
In the snaps, Wright is seen displaying her baby bump, with one particularly touching shot showing her looking down at her son while he faces her stomach.
She captioned the post, “Two babies on my lap, our second little earthling joining us this autumn,” shortly after teasing a “very special” update on her Instagram Stories with a waterside selfie.
Support from the Harry Potter family came quickly, with co-star Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood, among the first to offer her congratulations in the comments.
Wright and her husband, Andrew Lococo, originally met in 2020 and tied the knot in March 2022.
Their first child, Elio, was born in September 2023.
Olivia Munn has spoken movingly about her Your Friends & Neighbors costar Amanda Peet’s breast cancer diagnosis, urging fans to get checked early after Peet’s own experience showed just how much timing can matter.
Speaking to PEOPLE while promoting season two of their Apple TV+ series, Munn, 45, herself a breast cancer survivor, having been diagnosed in 2023, said she was relieved when Peet confided in her last year.
“She told me last year that she was diagnosed, and I was so relieved she found it at such an early, early stage,” she said.
“She found it at almost the earliest you can find it. She really was given a gift of finding it so early that she doesn’t have to do all the treatment and all the stuff you have to do for years and years to come.”
She was clear about what Peet’s experience represents for others.
“She’s incredibly lucky, and it’s another reminder that early detection saves lives.”
Peet, 54, revealed her diagnosis publicly for the first time in a deeply personal essay for The New Yorker on 21 March, having kept it private since 2025.
The piece described an almost unimaginably difficult period in her life, receiving her cancer diagnosis while both of her parents were simultaneously in hospice care on opposite coasts.
When her sister called to say their father was about to die, Peet flew to New York but didn’t make it in time.
“I didn’t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment,” she wrote.
“As soon as my dad’s corpse was out of sight, I was free to panic about my cancer again.”
Peet received her first clear scan in January. Days later, her mother, who had Parkinson’s disease, died in the hospice with her daughter by her side.
In Your Friends & Neighbors, Peet plays therapist Mel Cooper and Munn plays her friend and neighbour Sam Levitt.
New episodes are streaming now on Apple TV+.
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