Kelsea Ballerini is letting love in. During her Friday (Aug. 11) appearance on the Today show, the country singer was asked about a recent viral video of her and Chase Stokes kissing before she hit the stage — which prompted her to share a few kind words about the Outer Banks star and her rumored boyfriend.

“I’m so happy. He’s here too. It’s nice to feel so supported and seen,” Ballerini said, sweetly adding that the actor is “such a wonderful human being.”

Rumors of Ballerini and Stokes dating began swirling in January when the pair was spotted spending time together at the College Football Playoff National Championship in Los Angeles. One month later, Ballerini dropped a 20-minute short film with her Rolling Up the Welcome Mat EP in which she detailed the devastation of her divorce from fellow country star Morgan Evans. Ballerini made an expanded version of the EP titled Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (For Good), which was released Friday.

“This record is about a chapter of my life that is no longer mine, and so I think being able to honor it through music is really beautiful and bookmark it and preserve it, because I’ve learned a lot and I think its valuable, but I don’t want to keep harping on the past. It’s the past. I’m moving forward,” Ballerini told Today of the release.

As for what’s on the horizon for the country star, she’ll be celebrating her 30th birthday on Sept. 12 and will be using the milestone to relax: “I’m about to turn 30 and I’m excited to take a little bit of time off and go celebrate with my friends and my family and hang with my dog, and really dig my heels into my real life a little bit and live a life to write about.”

For Ballerini’s Today performance, she hit the stage to play “Blindsided,” which also appears on the project.

See Ballerini talk about her relationship with Stokes and Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (For Good) in the video above.

Amid a production halt during a double strike, major talent agency CAA is undergoing a round of layoffs.

About sixty employees are set to be impacted — including agents, executives and support staff — within the next week, a source tells The Hollywood Reporter. The figure is a relatively small percentage of the thousands of staffers that work at the Century City-based representation giant led by Kevin Huvane, Richard Lovett and Bryan Lourd.

Multiple departments had been evaluating staffing levels even prior to when the Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2. When performer’s union SAG-AFTRA joined the strike on July 13, Hollywood settled in to a long summer as the dealmaking ecosystem ground to a halt.

Several talent agencies have cut staff in the ensuing months as the guilds faced off with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios. For instance, Endeavor, the owner of fellow “Big 3” agency WME and fashion-focused IMG, estimated on August 8 that the impact of the actors’ and writers’ strikes would be about $25 million per month in revenue.

Talent and literary agency Verve, which reps many scribes, cut about 60 percent of its assistants and 3 agents in late May. And Big 3 firm UTA had already made a round of cuts, which it described as a single digit percentage of a workforce that totals 2,000 employees, in February.

Hollywood’s agencies went through retrenchment and conducted notable layoffs or furloughs during the COVID-19 shutdowns in the middle of 2020, also at a time of a widespread production halt. At that time, in July 2020, CAA said it cut 90 agents and executives and further furloughed 275 assistants and other staffers.

Since that time, CAA made the most consequential move in the Hollywood talent agency space, acquiring rival firm ICM in a megadeal that closed last June and added 425 of its employees to the payroll, with 105 staffers cut. At the time, the combined company was said to have 3,200 employees in 25 countries.

Deadline earlier reported CAA’s planned cuts on Thursday. 

This article was originally published by THR.com.

Following his 10-year prison sentence this week for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, Tory Lanez took to Instagram late Thursday (Aug. 10) to maintain his innocence and declare that he won’t “stop fighting till I come out victorious.”

Lanez (real name: Daystar Peterson) — who was convicted on three felony counts in December over the 2020 shooting — addressed the note to his “Umbrellas” fan group.

“I have never let a hard time intimidate me,” he wrote. “I will never never let no jail time eliminate me. Regardless of how they try to spin my words, I have always maintained my innocence and I always will.”

He writes that during his sentencing hearing, he took responsibility for “verbal and intimate moments that I shared with the parties involved,” but not for the shooting itself. “In no way shape or form was I apologizing for the charges I’m being wrongfully convicted of. I remain on the stance that I refuse to apologize for something that I did not do.”

Tuesday’s decadelong prison sentence for Lanez — which comes more than three years after the July 2020 shooting — was more than the probation sought by his lawyers but less than the 13 years prosecutors had suggested. The shooting occurred after Lanez, Megan Thee Stallion (real name: Megan Pete) and their friend Kelsey Harris left a party. According to prosecutors, Meg exited the vehicle and Lanez shot at her feet while shouting, “Dance, bi—!” Lanez was charged with the shooting in October 2022.

Read Lanez’s new statement in full below:

To The Umbrellas,

I have never let a hard time intimidate me. I will never never let no jail time eliminate me. Regardless of how they try to spin my words, I have always maintained my innocence and I always will.

This week in court I took responsibility for all verbal and intimate moments that I shared with the parties involved. … That’s it.

In no way shape or form was I apologizing for the charges I’m being wrongfully convicted of. I remain on the stance that I refuse to apologize for something that I did not do.

I’ve faced adversity my whole life and every time it looked like I would lose, I came out on top. This is nothing but another moment where my back is against the wall and I refuse to stop fighting till I come out victorious.

Tough times don’t last, tough people do.

To my family, friends and umbrellas thank you for your continued support.

See you soon.

A 17-year-old was indicted on a hate-crime murder charge in a stabbing that followed taunts and confrontation over a group of men dancing shirtless to Beyoncé as they gassed up their car, prosecutors said Thursday.

Prosecutors concluded O’Shae Sibley’s death was motivated by anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ bias, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said.

“It’s clear to me, under the circumstances of this case, that in substantial part, this attack was caused because people were offended by Mr. Sibley and his friends dancing and celebrating,” Gonzalez said.

The suspect is due in court Friday to answer the charge. It mirrors the charge on which he was arrested last week. If convicted, he faces at least 20 years in prison.

The Associated Press sent a text message to his attorney, Mark Pollard, seeking comment. Pollard’s voicemail box was full. The teen’s grandmother told the Daily News he was defending himself. Prosecutors have not released the suspect’s name.

The chain of events that ended in Sibley’s July 29 death began when he and his friends were dancing at a pump at a Brooklyn gas station, and another group of people began taunting them, authorities said.

Security camera video showed the two groups arguing for a few minutes. Both sides walked away, and then Sibley and a friend returned and confronted one of the others, who had stayed behind recording on his phone.

In the video, Sibley, 28, could be seen following that person and then lunging at him before the two disappeared out of the camera’s frame. A moment later, Sibley walked backward into view, checking his side, then collapsed to the sidewalk.

“What the video shows is that Mr. Sibley was rightfully in a position to speak out and protect himself and his friends from anti-gay and anti-Black slurs, and that what occurred after that was a crime,” said Gonzalez, a Democrat. He noted that Sibley and his friends were unarmed.

“Defending yourself from the anti-gay or anti-Black comments, arguing back, it’s not a cause for someone to take a weapon and do what was done in this case,” the prosecutor said. He added that he was confident the charges would be proven at trial.

Sibley performed with the dance company Philadanco in his native Philadelphia and in New York and took classes with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Ailey Extension program. He used dance to celebrate his LGBTQ identity in works such as “Soft: A Love Letter to Black Queer Men,” choreographed by Kemar Jewel.

About 200 people attended Sibley’s funeral Tuesday at a historic opera house in Philadelphia. His death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from politicians and celebrities, including Beyoncé and filmmaker Spike Lee.