Nov. 12, 2024
CBS PRESENTS “JOSH GROBAN & FRIENDS GO HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS,”
AN ENTERTAINMENT SPECIAL CELEBRATING THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF FAMILY DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, TO AIR FRIDAY, DEC. 20
Josh Groban Hosts and Performs on the Special, with Additional Performances by
James Bay, Jennifer Hudson, Tori Kelly and The War And Treat
CBS presents JOSH GROBAN & FRIENDS GO HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, an entertainment special celebrating the transformative power of family during the holiday season, to air Friday, Dec. 20 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs)*.
Hosted and executive produced by Josh Groban, the special features a new format combining compelling stories, music, comedy and a live adoption on stage, celebrating the creation of a new family. Musical performances include holiday classics, new releases and original duets with Groban and his guests, including James Bay, Jennifer Hudson, Tori Kelly and The War And Treaty.
“I am honored and excited to host a show with friends old and new to celebrate the unity and togetherness of the holidays. It’s especially important because it will spread the importance of adoption and will feature the most incredible kids. I can’t wait for everyone to watch with their families, sing along and hopefully make room in their hearts and homes for a child who needs one,” said Groban.
For the last quarter-century, the award-winning HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS has shined a light on the thousands of American children in foster care, and has inspired tens of thousands of adoptions, moving children into loving forever families. JOSH GROBAN & FRIENDS GO HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS continues its legacy of showcasing the transformative power of adoption, the true meaning of family and the magic of Christmas as seen through a child’s eyes. The special filmed in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills.
JOSH GROBAN & FRIENDS GO HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS is produced by Triage Entertainment and Goldsmith Entertainment. Josh Groban, Karen Mack, Stu Schreiberg, Stephen Kroopnick, Marilyn Seabury and Diarmuid Quinn are the executive producers. Jennifer Perry, Nicole Cadena and Kelly Brock are producers. Michael Simon is director.
About Josh Groban
Tony®, EMMY®, and five-time GRAMMY® Award-nominated singer, songwriter, actor, and philanthropist Josh Groban possesses one of the most outstanding and instantly recognizable voices in music. Moreover, he continues to captivate fans everywhere as both a powerhouse vocalist and dynamic renaissance man. He has sold over 35 million albums worldwide, headlined legendary venues all over the world, and has also entertained audiences with acclaimed film and television appearances. In 2016 he made his Tony nominated Broadway debut as Pierre in ’Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1912’, and in the Spring of 2023, Josh took to Broadway once again, performing in the highly anticipated revival of Sweeney Todd, playing the title role which earned him Tony and GRAMMY Nominations along with widespread acclaim.
About James Bay
GRAMMY Award-nominated and BRIT Award-winning multiplatinum artist James Bay is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer. This year, Bay returned with his critically acclaimed fourth album, Changes All the Time, which includes collaborations with Noah Kahan and The Lumineers on lead single “Up All Night” and features writing collaborations with The Killers’ Brandon Flowers and Holly Humberstone. Bay will return to North America for his much-anticipated “Up All Night” Tour in spring 2025.
About Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson is a GRAMMY, Oscar, Tony and Emmy-winning artist and entertainment icon who has been named one of Time’s “Most Influential People in the World,” received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, received NAACP Entertainer of the Year, performed at the Super Bowl, sang for world leaders and even has a day named after her in her beloved city of Chicago. Her nationally syndicated talk show, “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” is the recipient of 10 Daytime Emmy nominations and two People’s Choice nominations. On Oct. 18, Hudson released her highly anticipated first holiday album, The Gift of Love, featuring genre-defying, world-class collaborations on classics and original songs.
About Tori Kelly
Using her powerful voice and buoyant spirit, two-time GRAMMY Award-winning artist Tori Kelly has racked up Platinum certifications and hundreds of millions of streams to become one of pop music’s biggest stars. With her 2024 studio album TORI., the artist showcases her wide range of musical inspirations in a definitive statement that represents the vocal dynamism and heartening sincerity that’s allowed her to appear in films like “Sing” and collaborate with a diverse breadth of artists like Justin Bieber, Jacob Collier, Jon Batiste, and Illenium.
About The War And Treaty
Founded in 2014 by the husband-and-wife duo Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, The War And Treaty earned their first-ever GRAMMY nominations for Best New Artist and Best American Roots Song and were also nominated for Vocal Duo of the Year at the ACM Awards and Duo of the Year at the CMA Awards. They’ve won two Americana Music Awards and have received additional nominations and recognition from CMT Music Awards, Folk Alliance International, People’s Choice Country Awards, Country Music Hall of Fame, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry.
*Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers will have access to stream live via the live feed of their local CBS affiliate on the service, as well as on-demand. Paramount+ Essential subscribers will not have the option to stream live, but will have access to on-demand the day after the special airs.
CBS Press Contacts
Andrea Ballas: aballas@cbs.com
Kate Fisher: khfisher@cbs.com
Remembering Norman Mailer and His Thorny Legacy
“How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” hits on an ingenious structure that avoids hagiography even as it includes friends and family.
Given the hagiographic bias of most celebrity documentaries, “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” (in theaters) sails into choppy waters. The director Jeff Zimbalist had to figure out a way to sum up one of the 20th century’s most admired, and most notorious, cultural figures. Mailer’s legacy as a novelist, speaker, filmmaker and pop culture icon — the movie reminded me how often he’s mentioned in “Gilmore Girls” — is full of bad behavior and also brilliant work, and making a film about such a person seems nearly impossible in our nuance-averse climate.
The key is to play with the documentary’s structure, eschewing the usual soup-to-nuts setup. “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” is admittedly designed as a roughly chronological recounting of the writer’s life, covering all the highlights: six wives (one of whom he famously, horribly stabbed with a penknife), nine children, a stint in the military, best-selling novels, a fascination with brawling, combative TV appearances, opinions about God and machines and Americans’ midcentury impulse toward conformity.
But Zimbalist hits on a great idea: arrange the film in terms of what Mailer’s friends, enemies and acquaintances believe his “rules for coming alive” might be. The author’s life and legacy can thus be traced through those rules, and his evolution as a person — and he did evolve, constantly, insatiably — starts to make more sense. What emerges is a portrait of a man as often at war with himself as with his family, friends and countrymen, driven relentlessly toward machismo and always spoiling for a fight. This is not a person you can present neutrally to an audience.
There are seven rules, announced in intertitles, including, “Don’t Be a Nice Jewish Boy,” “Be Wrong More Than You’re Right” and “Be Willing to Die for an Idea.” It’s an appealing structure, and the many interviewees discuss the ways Mailer embodied them, supported by archival film and interviews with the man himself. There’s a lot of footage to work with. By midcareer, Mailer was ubiquitous on camera; as one person notes, he seemed to never turn down an opportunity to be interviewed or share his views publicly.
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I’m impressed by how well the film balances criticism and fondness. Several of Mailer’s children are among the interviewees, as are ex-wives, all of whom have frank stories, while also respecting his rapacious intellectual curiosity, his drive to always be thinking and questioning. Especially delightful is the segment that revisits his appearance as rabble-rouser in an explosive panel discussion on feminism held in 1971 and documented in D.A. Pennebaker’s excellent documentary “Town Bloody Hall” (streaming on the Criterion Channel). Mailer was set up on the panel as the opposing voice to feminist theorists, and came in for a drubbing; this film reminds us that Mailer was there because he was valued by those same interlocutors, some of whom are interviewed expressing their respect for his input.
I expect every viewer of “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” will have some quibble with it, but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless — a model for how to reimagine a standard documentary structure to accommodate a multifaceted subject without smoothing over the rough spots and slapping on a halo. And for those who don’t know his work, it’s a worthy introduction: a study in how not to live, but also in how to come alive.
‘11 Minutes’ Team Explores Crowd Crush Tragedy In Seoul For Paramount+
EXCLUSIVE: The team behind award-winning documentary 11 Minutes, which told the story of the mass shooting at Las Vegas’ Route 91 Harvest music festival, have set up another docuseries at Paramount+.
The streamer has ordered Crush, which will explore the Halloween tragedy in Seoul, South Korea, that left 159 dead and hundreds injured.
The series, which is set to launch this fall, likely around the anniversary of the tragedy, comes from See It Now Studios, Triage Entertainment, and All Rise Films. It is exec produced by Jeff Zimbalist, who directs, Stu Schreiberg, Terence Wrong and Susan Zirinsky with Josh Gaynor as co-exec producer, Aysu Saliba as supervising producer and Alana Saad as producer.
The Seoul crush tragedy occurred on October 29, 2022 during Halloween festivities in the Itaewon neighborhood of the South Korean city and was the country’s largest crowd crush in its history.
Continued on deadline.com