You have questions. I have some answers.
Q: I was doing a puzzle where a clue was an actor turned down the lead in the movie “American Gigolo” because of its content — and the answer was Chevy Chase. Is that really true?
A: Vulture.com in 2011 indeed said Chase turned down the role because “he was uncomfortable with the sexual content of the film.” In an interview with HuffPost the following year, Chase said he turned down a lot of movies: “I turned down ‘Forrest Gump,’ I turned down ‘American Gigolo.’ There are many films — like ‘Ghostbusters’ — that I turned down … the first one I did was ‘Foul Play’ with Goldie Hawn, but I turned down ‘Animal House.’ I turned that down.” He regretted the rejections because the movies “made huge amounts of money and I would be very wealthy, but I don’t regret working with Goldie.”
By the way, Chase was in one film before “Foul Play”: the sketch comedy “The Groove Tube.” And “American Gigolo” inspired a TV series which ran on Showtime for one season in 2022.Speaking of inspirations …
Q: What happened to the “Lethal Weapon” TV show? I liked the action.
A: Fox carried a show derived from the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover movies for three seasons in 2016-2019. Its ratings were respectable at the end, says Deadline.com, but off-camera drama “sealed the show’s fate.” The drama included the firing of Clayne Crawford, in the Gibson role, in the second season amid conflicts with co-star Damon Wayans (in the Glover role) and accusations of bad behavior on the set. (Crawford reportedly had a different view.) Seann William Scott joined the show as a new character after Crawford’s departure, but then in the third season Wayans announced he was going to leave when the ordered episodes were done, leading to more scrambling behind the scenes. The show did not get a fourth season.
Q: A season ago on “The Good Doctor,” Lea and Shaun were married and had a baby. What happened?
A: The long romance between Shaun (Freddie Highmore) and Lea (Paige Spara) led to their wedding in the fifth season. After earlier troubles during pregnancy on the show, Paige had their child in the sixth-season finale in May. He was named Steven Aaron Murphy, after Shaun’s late brother and Shaun’s mentor Aaron Glassman. As for what happens next, we’ll have to see in the seventh season (delayed, like most screen entertainment, by the Hollywood strikes).
Tribune News Service
