The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Posted: 16 May 2013 05:00 PM PDT

The flamboyant singer gives fans a peek into her colourful and vibrant life in a new reality series.

AT first glance, pop star Ke$ha's life looks like a kaleidoscope made up of a frenzy of glitzy concert shows, night after night of wild partying and colourful (ahem) "encounters" with strangers at the bar.

"I like to make out with people, I'm kind of like a make out slut," Ke$ha said candidly in a recent conference call from Los Angeles. "But I don't actually do more than that with anybody. I think people think that I get super frisky all the time, but I don't. I just like to make out with people because kissing is super fun," she quickly added.

The singer-rapper, whose real name is Kesha Rose Sebert, was fielding questions about her six-part documentary series, Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life, where viewers get front row seat to her wacky, exciting life.

The 26-year-old star explained there was nothing she wouldn't do just because the cameras were rolling. Get this, the man behind the camera is her brother. Journalist and documentary filmmaker Lagan Sebert left his job and filmed his sister's journey as she travelled around Europe, Australia and North America as part of her Get Sleazy Tour in 2011.

Ke$ha said that it was this close relationship with her brother that made her feel comfortable in showing viewers the real her. (If it's any indication, she repeatedly peppered the interview with statements about the show like "no makeup on," "no pants on" or "I wish I put a bra on"). In fact, she felt so comfortable that she allowed cameras to capture her drinking her own urine.

"I did drink my pee, but that was because I'm really bad at saying no. And I also have a philosophy that I'm down to try anything in life one time … So I tried it, and it was really disgusting. I don't recommend it, and I probably won't be drinking my pee ever again," she revealed.

The controversial scene may not make it to the series but Ke$ha is fighting hard to get the footage aired in a bid to "give my fans the truth".

But it is not all fluff all the time with Ke$ha. As the camera rolls on, viewers will see a shift in her life. In one episode, she speaks through tears about celebrity blogger Perez Hilton's move to leak intimate photos of her and her boyfriend Harold, eventually leading to their break up.

"He single-handedly ruined the only relationship that's ever meant anything to me," she said after learning that the blogger was among the audience at the Los Angeles leg of her tour.

"My family doesn't have to deal with this. He stands for everything I hate. Everything I'm against."

Ke$ha also called the blogger "a bully that was incredibly loud and had a platform" but said that the experience enabled her fans to relate to her more.

"I think it just shows my fans that, although on a different level, I also know what it feels like to be bullied just for being yourself," she said, adding that she used to get bullied in school for her fashion choices.

True enough, in an episode, a bullied teenager, Jaiho, walks up to the singer and thanks her for empowering him through her music.

With so many reality shows on TV these days, notably, Keeping Up With The Kardashians (Ke$ha admitted to being "secretly in love" with the show), one wonders how will Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life compete with them.

Ke$ha shared that she doesn't see it as a competition: "I love seeing women dominate the airwaves musically and I love seeing women all over TV just killing it. So it never really felt like a competition, and we're so different that it's not a competitive thing for me."

Asked whether the singer will swap her "crazy" life for marriage, babies and a home in the suburbs (like the Kardashian sisters, perhaps?), she responded with a laugh: "Ew, gross."

> Watch Ke$ha living her cool life every Saturday at 5.30pm on MTV (Astro Ch 713).

Gillian Anderson has the X factor

Posted: 17 May 2013 04:16 AM PDT

After more than a decade away from American television, actress Gillian Anderson is back on the new TV series Hannibal, playing psychiatrist to human flesh-chewing, Chanti-sipping serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

Her three-episode arc on the show is sure to delight fans of science-fiction series The X-Files, nothing short of a pop cultural phenomenon when it aired from 1993 to 2002, on which she played FBI Agent Dana Scully.

At a press conference for the show in Toronto, the 44-year-old says she was drawn to this project by the stellar cast, which includes actors such as Hugh Dancy (Martha Marcy May Marlene, 2011), Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale, 2006) and Laurence Fishburne (the Matrix films, 1999 to 2003).

"The thought of being able to dip into Toronto for a few days and play with this line-up of actors was just too good to refuse," says Anderson, who also reveals there is a connection between Agent Scully and the female FBI agent Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster in The Silence Of The Lambs (1991), a role which won her the Best Actress Oscar.

"It feels a little bit like a full circle, because The X-Files started shortly after The Silence Of The Lambs came out. And I was told shortly after we began that she (Dana Scully) was loosely based on Jodie Foster's character," she says. The X-Files creator Chris Carter has long cited Jonathan Demme's film adaptation as an inspiration, and has said that he deliberately made Scully a redhead like Starling.

"There's something about it that feels like we're in the same conversation," adds Anderson, who was reportedly in the running for the role of Starling in the 2001 Lambs sequel, Hannibal. It eventually went to Julianne Moore.

As Scully, Anderson became something of a geek goddess for the legions of viewers who lapped up the show's alien abductions and conspiracy theories, and even a lightning rod for debates about feminism because of her unusual partnership with Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), which eventually turned romantic.

When the series ended, the actress seemed to vanish off the radar in the United States, although she appeared in the two X-Files films in 1998 and 2008, which disappointed fans and tanked at the American box office.

She did better on the other side of the pond, where she slipped easily into a British accent because of a decade spent there as a child, appearing in TV productions such as an adaptation of Bleak House (2005) and the period drama Any Human Heart (2010), which earned her a Bafta nomination for her role as Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor whom King Edward VIII abdicated to marry. She also had a supporting role in the acclaimed 2006 film The Last King Of Scotland.

The X-Files is still something Anderson holds close to heart; she believes the show was ground-breaking in many ways.

"If you look at the way that it was lit, the way that it was shot, the production values, the money that was thrown into it and the horror aspect of it, the unsolved crimes... I mean, look at the number of other shows that have tried to copy it over the last 20 years," she says.

The show has also had a lasting impact on her - she admits that there will always be a little bit of Dana Scully in all her performances.

"She's there somewhere." – The Straits Times, Singapore/ Asia News Network.

> Hannibal airs every Tuesday at 10pm on AXN (Astro Ch 701/HD Ch 721).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Khamis, 16 Mei 2013