Rita Moreno to Receive NATPE’s Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award

Rita Moreno is a legacy…

The National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) will honor the 86-year-old Puerto Rican actress, dancer and singer with its Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards in 2019.

Rita Moreno

The 16th annual Tartikoffs, as their called,will be doled out at NATPE’s conference in Miami in January. They are named for the late NBC Entertainment chief who assembled the network’s top-rated programming lineups in the 1980s.

Moreno, whose career has spanned more than 70 years, is an “EGOT” winner (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), as well as a Kennedy Center honoree who currently stars in Netflix’s One Day at a Time.

She’s also one of 23 people who have achieved what is called the Triple Crown of Acting, with individual competitive OscarEmmy and Tony awards for acting. She has won numerous other awards, including various lifetime achievement awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to Moreno, other honorees include Betty WhiteHenry Winkler, Byron AllenBob Greenblatt and Mara Brock Akil.

Conference organizers said the award recipients are recognized “for exhibiting their extraordinary passion, leadership, independence and vision through their diverse work in being a part of the creation and distribution of content for the world’s traditional and digital marketplaces.”

Freeform Orders Additional Episodes of Carrero’s “Young & Hungry” Series

Aimee Carrero will be suffering more Hungry pains…

Freeform has ordered additional episodes of its original comedy series Young & Hungry, starring the 28-year-old Dominican actress, ahead of the show’s March 13 Season 5 premiere.

Aimee Carrero & Emily Osment

The initial Season 5 order was the standard 10 episodes, according to Deadline.com. The back order, is reportedly for 10 episodes. This would bring the total to 20 episodes, which would match the episode count of Season 2. Seasons 1,3 and 4 of the sitcom consisted of 10 episodes each.

In the fourth season finale, Gabi (Emily Osment) and Josh decided to be “friends with benefits,” much to the group’s chagrin, after their previous attempts at a relationship went awry. In the fifth season, Gabi and Josh try to prove to everyone that they won’t let feelings get in the way of their new arrangement, Sofia (Carrero) continues on the path to a career in journalism, and Josh faces an unexpected reunion with his estranged father. Season 5 features Betty White as a recurring guest star, playing neighbor Ms. Wilson, with Carl Reiner also set to appear.

The additional Season 5 episode order comes on the heels of Freeform’s recent decision not to proceed with its planned Young & Hungry spinoff toplined by Ashley Tisdale and Carrero. The multi-camera comedy project, titled Young & Sofia, originated as a planted spinoff pilot, which aired as the eighth episode of Young & Hungry‘s most recent fourth season.

Young & Hungry was the No. 1 original ad-supported cable comedy for Summer 2016 in Adults 18-34, with Season 4 posting year-to-year demo and viewership gains.

The Associated Press Names Miranda Its Entertainer of the Year

Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t just the man of the hour… He’s the man of the last 8,000-plus hours.

The 36-year-old Puerto Rican actor, playwright, composer, rapper, and writer, bested Beyonce, Adele and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, among others, to earn the honor of The Associated Press Entertainer of the Year, voted by members of the news cooperative and AP entertainment reporters.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights. Miranda has had a banner year, winning a Pulitzer Prize and a pair of Tony Awards.

The Hamilton writer-composer also earned a Golden Globe nomination, won the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, wrote music for a top movie, and inspired a best-selling book, a best-selling album of Hamilton covers and a popular PBS documentary.

“There’s been more than a little good luck in the year itself and the way it’s unfolded,” Miranda said after being told of the honor. “I continue to try to work on the things I’ve always wanted to work on and try to say yes to the opportunities that I’d kick myself forever if I didn’t jump at them.”

Miranda joins the list of previous AP Entertainer of the Year winners who in recent years have included Adele, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, Lady Gaga, Tina Fey and Betty White.

The animated Disney juggernaut Frozen captured the prize in 2014, and Star Wars won last year. (Miranda wrote one of the songs in The Force Awakens.)

When he hosted Saturday Night Live in October, he somewhat tongue-in-cheek acknowledged the rarity of having a theater composer as host, saying: “Most of you watching at home have no idea who I am.”

But that has definitely changed… Miranda was virtually everywhere in popular culture this year — stage, film, TV, music and politics — engaging on social media as he went. Like a lyric he wrote for Alexander Hamilton, it seemed at times that the non-stop Miranda was working as if he was “running out of time.”

Julio D. Diaz, of the Pensacola News Journal, said Miranda “made the whole world sing, dance and think. Coupled with using his prestige to become involved in important sociopolitical issues, there was no greater or more important presence in entertainment in 2016.”

Among the things Miranda did this year are asking the U.S. Congress to help dig Puerto Rico out of its debt crisis, getting an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, performing at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Broadway, lobbying to stop gun violence in America, and teaming up with Jennifer Lopez on the benefit single “Love Make the World Go Round.”

He and his musical Hamilton won 11 Tony Awards in June, but perhaps his deepest contribution that night was tearfully honoring those killed hours before at an Orlando nightclub with a beautiful sonnet: “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside,” he said. “Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”

He started the year onstage in the Broadway hit Hamilton (which in 2015 had won a Grammy and earned Miranda a MacArthur genius grant) and ended it with a Golden Globe nomination for writing the song “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, which was on top of the box office for three weeks this month, earning $165 million.

“I’ve been jumping from thing to thing and what’s been thrilling is to see the projects that happen very quickly kind of exploding side-by-side with the projects I’ve been working on for years,” Miranda said.

Though theater fans have long cherished his fluency in both Stephen Sondheim and TupacHamilton helped Miranda break into the mainstream in 2016. The groundbreaking, biographical hip-hop show tells the true story of an orphan immigrant from the Caribbean who rises to the highest ranks of American society, performed by a young African-American and Latino cast.

The cast went to the White House in March to perform songs from the show for the first family and to answer questions from school children. A version of the show opened in Chicago in October and a production is slated to land in California next year and in London soon.

Erin O’Neill of The Marietta Times said Miranda dominated entertainment news this year but, more importantly, “opened a dialogue about government, the founding of our country and the future of politics in America.”

There’s more Miranda to come in 2017, including filming Disney‘s Mary Poppins Returns with Emily Blunt (due out Christmas 2018) and an ambitious TV and film adaptation of the fantasy trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle.

“I’m back in a planting mode after a harvest,” Miranda said, laughing.

Fuentes Participates in Inspiring Online St. Jude Video

She may not be known for her singing abilities, but that isn’t stopping Daisy Fuentes from lending her voice to a good cause.

The 45-year-old Cuban-American television host, model, comedian appears in a new video from the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, set to the iconic Beatles tune, “Hey Jude?”

Daisy Fuentes & Luis Fonsi

St. Jude released the video to commemorate National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and honor 50 years of finding cures and saving children.

The inspiring online video features St. Jude patients, hospital staff, notable actors, musicians and sports stars who have joined forces to “make it better” for children with cancer and other deadly diseases.

Other notable celebrities taking part in the video include Colombian superstar Juanes, Puerto Rican singing sensation Luis Fonsi and Make It or Break It actress Josie Loren, as well as Jennifer Aniston, Betty White and Ellen DeGeneres.

The “Hey St. Jude” video was produced by Tony Thomas, Hollywood producer and son of St. Jude founder Danny Thomas.