Days on movie sets are long ― even longer when they’re spent wearing constricting period garb. Just ask the cast of “Hidden Figures.”

The costumes in Theodore Melfi’s charming biopic about three black women who crunched the calculations NASA needed to send American astronauts to space may not seem as stuffy as, say, a regal Elizabethan drama. But Octavia Spencer told The Huffington Post that the actresses, opting for historical accuracy, donned girdles underneath the nice dresses and heels that working women were expected to wear in the 1960s. (Until the late ‘60s, it was considered vulgar and immodest for women to go without girdles.) Throughout the warm shoot in Atlanta last year, the garments felt more and more compressing, resulting in what became known as “Girdlegate.”

When Spencer arrived for the first rehearsal, co-stars Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monáe were decked out in clothes similar to their costumes. Knowing she’d be “bound” to designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus’ wardrobe choices soon enough, Spencer chose a more freeing ensemble of jeans, a T-shirt and flip-flops.

Spencer chose well. Later in the shoot, the actress shared a crammed day of scenes with Kirsten Dunst, who plays the strict supervisor sometimes at odds with Spencer’s Dorothy Vaughn, a skilled mathematician fighting for the promotion she deserves. Beneath snug dresses, Spencer and Dunst sported their typical girdles. Lunch that afternoon was Asian food. Anyone who’s had a few too many servings of chow mein and General Tso’s chicken knows the sodium levels are often unkind to waistlines. 

The meal made Spencer and Dunst swell. Cue Girdlegate, which had them panicking about getting through the rest of the day.

“It was literally right after lunch and I’m thinking, ‘I’m not going to be able to work,’” Spencer recalled, laughing at the memory. “And then Kirsten got sick, I got sick.”

Spencer did what any modern woman should: She decided enough was enough. 

“I just finally had a moment: ‘I’m not wearing a girdle! I’m just not doing it,’” Spencer declared, to which Melfi responded, “You don’t have to wear the girdle! Why are you wearing a girdle?’”

So, Spencer and Dunst ripped off the undergarments and never wore them again. Girdlegate solved. Thanks, craft service.

“It was so funny, because [he was] like, ‘No, nobody has to wear a girdle,’” Spencer said, referring to Melfi. “I was like, ‘I love him for that.’”

“Hidden Figures” is now open in limited release. It opens nationwide Jan. 6.

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In the wake of Carrie Fisher’s death on Tuesday, many are channeling their grief in a variety of ways.

Some are expressing their anguish through tweeting, others are compiling their favorite moments from Fisher’s long and impressive career, and one Instagram account is even honoring the witty author with some pretty impressive pancake art.

But many visual artists and comics from all over the globe are remembering the late actress, who is best known for her iconic role as Princess Leia in “Star Wars,” the best way they know how — through illustrations.

Here are 12 heartbreaking tributes to the beloved Carrie Fisher, who will never be forgotten:

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“I do not believe in talking down to children,” Richard Adams explained in an interview with The Guardian last year.

This, coming from an author widely known for writing the most violent “talking rabbit book” in history, is an understatement. Watership Down, his 1972 adventure novel, is not only what happens when a writer refuses to talk down to children. It’s what happens when a writer refuses on all counts to shelter kids from the brutal, melancholy realities of our nonfictional world. It’s what happens when a writer decides to give his young readers an obvious, but invaluable lesson: loss, obstacles and chaos, whether we choose them or not, are part of life.

Adams, who died on Tuesday at the age of 96, has recounted the birth of Watership Down many times. In the late 1960s, he ― then a civil servant in the U.K. who’d never written fiction in his life ― would entertain his two daughters on the way to school by telling them stories that revolved around a particularly troubled warren of rabbits. “Once there were two rabbits called Hazel and Fiver,” he’d begin, telling tales captivating in their darkness, involving poison, snares and attack dogs.

Eventually, encouraged by his daughters, Adams put pen to paper and submitted a surprisingly vicious and rabbit-filled manuscript to publishers. Rejected seven times (”They felt the language was too grown up,” Adams explained in a Reddit AMA, “yet the older children wouldn’t like it because it was about rabbits!”), it was finally accepted by Rex Collings, the tiny and summarily lucky publishing house that would go on to see the book sell in the millions.

Hazel and Fiver are names that pique the ears of those who’ve navigated through Adams’ award-winning, 400-plus-page book. Brothers, they lived in a bucolic landscape meant to mimic the Berkshire Downs of Adams’ childhood. Spurred on by an apocalyptic vision Fiver has, they, along with a small group of other rabbits, decide to leave their vulnerable home in search of a new one. The Odyssean journey is neither smooth nor assuring. The distinct characters, so carefully anthropomorphized, are never blindly valiant as a result.

A particularly jarring passage of Watership Down describes the pure fear and anxiety Fiver experiences after involuntarily parting ways with his brother Hazel halfway through the book.

In the burrow, Fiver slept and woke uneasily through the heat of the day, fidgeting and scratching as the last traces of moisture dried out of the earth above him. Once, when a trickle of powdery soil fell from the roof, he leaped out of sleep and was in the mouth of the run before he came to himself and returned to where he had been lying. Each time he woke, he remembered the loss of Hazel and suffered once more the knowledge that had pierced him as the shadowy, limping rabbit disappeared in the first light of morning on the down.

Because of its subject matter (talking rabbits), and perhaps the fact that many first encounter Adams on a high school reading list, some fans might classify Watership Down as a children’s book. Adams shrugs off the label entirely. “I don’t believe there should be such a thing as a children’s book,” he explained during a Reddit AMA. “A book is a book is a book,” he supposes in other interviews. 

In 1974, New York Times critic Richard Gilman directly questioned the intended audience of Adams’ book, claiming, “I can’t imagine many readers under 13 or 14, an age when the lines between juvenile and adult fiction begin to blur, having the patience and grasp of extended allegorical strategies to persevere to the end of a 426‐page epic about a community of rabbits.”

Gilman’s lack of faith in the reading comprehension of teenagers aside, his criticism missed the point. Kids on the precipice of adulthood should be encouraged to read books like Watership Down whether they have the patience for it or not. Humanity wrought through the eyes of bunnies is exactly the kind of fantasy readers under 13 or 14 should be exposed to. The kind of twisted, alien plot that sits in our heads for decades, becoming brighter and more poignant as you age and better empathize with moments like Fiver’s. The kind of book that unravels slowly, painfully, to reveal a story so realistic it’s easy to forget you’re dealing with talking rabbits and make-believe.

“Readers like to be upset, excited and bowled over,” Adams continued in his 2015 interview with The Guardian, remembering his early literary preferences. “I can remember weeping when I was little at upsetting things that were read to me, but fortunately my mother and father were wise enough to keep going.”

Of course, not all mothers and fathers are. Many want to shade their kids from the harsh realities of life, a natural instinct hardly worth criticizing here. Some children come face to face with loss regardless ― be it physical, financial, psychological. They are forced to understand grief and resentment firsthand. They are forced to understand that hard work and persistence and focused belief don’t always yield epic outcomes. But others, nestled safely, are not.

Fiction, thankfully, can give us the gift of empathy. The kind of empathy your protective parents might not be able to impart. Adams, though a parent himself, aware of the fear his stories instilled in his own daughters, remains cooly detached from Watership Down readers. Through his writing, he’s not attempting to provide solace or security. He’s attempting to forge stories that, like the kind he read in his youth (by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Algernon Blackwood), made him feel sad and frightened. That familiarized him with the cold, cloying feeling of worry.

Why? Well, Adams, so unaware that he was crafting a classic when he first started sharing stories of Hazel and Fiver, answers the question early on in his book.

To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse ― that cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature. 

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Ten years ago, rom-com fans everywhere fell in love with “The Holiday.” Starring Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jack Black, the movie told the story of two women from different countries who traded homes for the holidays to escape their drama-filled lives for a little while. 

But in all honesty, the true stars of the movie were child actresses Miffy Englefield and Emma Pritchard, who played Law’s adorable on-screen daughters, Sophie and Olivia. (Mr. Napkin Head, anyone?!)

“I was thinking about those two kids the other day — I’m sure they’re not kids now — and seeing them. I bet they’re all grown up, aren’t they?” Law said in a recent interview with People.

Well yes, Jude. They are all grown up. 

Although Pritchard gave up acting after “The Holiday,” Englefield, now 17, appeared in two TV series ― “The Whistleblowers” and “Casualty” ― before stepping away from the spotlight.

This was her then (on the left): 

And this is her now:

According to the Daily Mail, Englefield studied performing arts in college. On Instagram, she describes herself as a “musical being” who’s “loud and mostly ridiculous.”

She also shaved her head for Children with Cancer UK last year, so she’s definitely a special kind of teenager. 

We’re still waiting for “The Holiday 2” to come out ...

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Just one day after the death of her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, beloved Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds died Wednesday. She was 84. 

Todd Fisher, her son, confirmed his mother’s death to Variety.

TMZ reported that Reynolds was hospitalized Wednesday for a medical emergency. She reportedly suffered a stroke at Todd’s Los Angeles home.

"She wanted to be with Carrie," Todd told Variety.

She was born Mary Frances Reynolds on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas. In 1939, her family ― mother Maxine, father Raymond and brother Bill ― moved to Burbank, California, where, as a teenager, Debbie’s career began. She first gained attention and a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Helen Kane in 1950’s “Three Little Words.” But it was “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1952 that ensured her Hollywood fame. She was only 19 when the movie premiered.

Her other notable films include “Bundle of Joy,” “The Catered Affair,” “Tammy and the Bachelor,” “How the West Was Won” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” which earned her a lead actress Academy Award nomination. In the last 20 years, she’s starred in movies including 1996’s “Mother,” 1997’s “In & Out” and 2013’s “Behind the Candelabra,” and has been a part of TV shows such as “Will & Grace,” “Rugrats” and “Kim Possible.” 

Reynolds was a noted dancer, singer and cabaret performer. She was a bestselling vocalist in the 1950s with “Aba Daba Honeymoon” (from “Two Weeks With Love”) and “Tammy” (from “Tammy and the Bachelor”), “A Very Special Love” and “Am I That Easy to Forget.” She’s graced the stage in Broadway such productions as “Debbie,” “Woman of the Year” and “Irene,” which earned her a Tony nomination. 

Reynolds was a successful businesswoman, as well. She operated her own hotel in Las Vegas in 1992, collected film memorabilia and founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood in 1979, which is still open.

The actress’ footprints and handprints are preserved at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2014, she was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2016 Academy Awards. 

Reynolds was married three times. First to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955, with whom she had two children ― her now late daughter, Carrie, and son Todd. The couple divorced in 1959 after Fisher’s affair with Reynolds’ good friend Elizabeth Taylor. She was married to businessman Harry Karl from 1960 to 1973, and tied the knot with real estate developer Richard Hamlett in 1984. They divorced in 1996.

Reynolds had a tumultuous relationship with her daughter. They were estranged for almost a decade before reconciling in the years before Carrie’s death. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2011, Reynolds said Carrie’s drug addiction and bipolar disorder put a strain on their relationship. 

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2016 has claimed yet another incredible force in Hollywood. 

Debbie Reynolds, the iconic actress and mother of Carrie Fisher, died on Wednesday, just one day after her beloved daughter. She was 84.

Fisher died Tuesday at the age of 60 after suffering a heart attack on a plane last week. She leaves behind her beautiful daughter, actress Billie Lourd.

“She wanted to be with Carrie,” Reynolds’ son Todd told Variety, confirming his mother’s death.

Celebrities flocked to Twitter to share their tributes, thoughts and condolences, reacting to the tragic turn of events for the family. 

See some of the touching tributes below: 

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Hours before his mother, Debbie Reynolds, suffered a fatal stroke, Todd Fisher logged on to Twitter to share a few thoughts on his late sister, Carrie Fisher, who had died one day earlier.

“My sister has graduated to heaven, but she has left us all with so much of her,” he wrote to his followers Wednesday morning, including a photo of a young Reynolds holding toddlers Carrie and Todd. “It is a very sad time for my family.”

Later that afternoon, while Fisher and his mother were planning funeral arrangements for Carrie, Reynolds suffered a stroke and was rushed from his Beverly Hills home to a hospital.

Hours later, Todd Fisher announced to the media that his mother had died.

“She wanted to be with Carrie,” he told Variety.

Debbie Reynolds, Carrie and Todd Fisher, and their immediate family were very affectionate toward one another, as indicated by tweets shared by Todd throughout the year.

The 58-year-old film producer would often share photos of himself with his sister, mother or his in-laws on Carrie’s side.

In a post written earlier this month, he said his family had “always been close.”

“That’s why my mother had me,” he wrote in early December. “So Carrie would have someone to look after her.”

That tweet was in response to a fan who shared a photo of Todd and Carrie as babies.

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When “Falsettos” premiered on Broadway in 1992, the William Finn-James Lapine musical struck a fresh chord in its depiction of gay relationships and unconventional families during the HIV/AIDS crisis.

As beloved as the show was in its original incarnation, the LGBTQ community has made significant strides toward equality in the 24 years since then. So when it was announced that “Falsettos” would be returning to Broadway in a Lincoln Center Theater production this fall, Lapine sought a creative team who would approach the musical as a new work altogether.

Enter Emmy-nominated choreographer Spencer Liff, who is best known for eight seasons’ worth of “So You Think You Can Dance” footwork. The 31-year-old Arizona native is no stranger to Broadway, too, with a résumé that includes dancing in the ensembles of “Cry-Baby” and “9 To 5.” Behind the scenes, he’s taught Neil Patrick Harris, Andrew Rannells, Darren Criss and others to strut in spike heels for the Tony-winning revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” and worked with a cast of hearing-impaired performers for “Spring Awakening,” which was remounted on Broadway to great acclaim last season.

Still, Liff said that when Lapine tapped him to choreograph “Falsettos,” he was initially hesitant. For one thing, he wasn’t familiar at all with the musical, which explores the complicated dynamics between a gay couple, Marvin and Whizzer (Christian Borle and Rannells), as well as Marvin’s ex-wife Trina (Stephanie J. Block) and son Jason (Anthony Rosenthal) in the mid-1980s. He also felt at some remove from the show’s depiction of the HIV/AIDS crisis in its second act.

“I didn’t know ‘Falsettos’ at all when I started working on it. I realize that’s terrible of me because the show’s been around forever, and it’s held in such high esteem,” Liff told The Huffington Post. Ultimately, however, he came to realize that the show “was so incredibly ahead of its time when it was written. So I was interested in being able to give [audiences] a bit of a reality check into what the generation before ours went through.”

Although Liff is best known for his fancy footwork, he opted for a more nuanced approach to “Falsettos,” treating the show, as he puts it, as an “abstract art piece.” Primarily, the staging requires the characters to manipulate a Rubik’s Cube-like contraption resembling a pile of cinder blocks that can morph into a kitchen, a playground and even a bedroom seamlessly. Designed by David Rockwell, the simple set piece represents the characters’ “sense of trying to find their place in the world,” Liff said. 

His work with “Falsettos” has certainly paid off. The revival, which opened Oct. 27 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, garnered raves in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and Time Out New York, among other publications. The show, which ends its limited run Jan. 8, will be preserved on film for an upcoming “Live From Lincoln Center” special to air on PBS.

Liff is thrilled by the buzz that “Falsettos” has generated, particularly in a busy theater season and in a time when the LGBTQ community and other minority groups are facing an uncertain future. “We live in this new PrEP culture, and the idea of what AIDS and HIV was [has evolved],” Liff said. As an openly gay man himself, he felt that it was his responsibility to “present the show in a way that would make people stop and think about their actions, and have more respect for the battle” toward equality that LGBTQ people have had to fight across generations.  

Liff’s next project, however, couldn’t be any more different. He’s currently at work on the choreography for “Head Over Heels,” a musical based on Philip Sidney’s 16^th century text, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, using the songs of the ‘80s female rock group, The Go-Go’s. The show will be fully staged in a developmental production on Jan. 16 and is aiming for Broadway in fall 2017, with “Spring Awakening” and “Hedwig” director Michael Mayer at the helm.

If Mayer’s previous work is any indication, “Head Over Heels” won’t shy away from sex or politics, albeit in an entertaining way. Given the seriousness of America’s political climate, Liff told HuffPost he “can’t work on fluff right now,” but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m very lucky to be an artist at this time,” he said. “We’re the ones who get to channel and funnel our emotions and our frustrations into something beautiful, something that might help the world in some sort of way. If one person a night can be changed by [a show that I’ve worked on], I’m even luckier.” 

“Falsettos” plays New York’s Walter Kerr Theatre through Jan. 8. Head here for more information. 

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A lot can happen in twelve months. From the Pulse nightclub massacre to the controversy over transgender people using public restrooms, 2016 was a challenging year (to say the least) for the queer community. Many LGBTQ people spoke out about these events in hopes of clearing their minds, starting conversations and finding progressive paths forward.

Below are excerpts from 26 of the best queer essays published on The Huffington Post in 2016 by contributors to the site. The topics tackled include the big news stories of the year as well as smart and personal takes on issues like kink and masculinity that are all too frequently ignored. Check out a sample from each piece and then click through to read the full essay.

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Hollywood is reeling over the loss of iconic actress Debbie Reynolds, who died on Wednesday, just one day after her beloved daughter, Carrie Fisher. 

Fellow actors and industry professionals have taken to social media to honor the late star and send their condolences to the Reynolds and Fisher families.

But one tribute that was beyond touching was Russ Tamblyn’s. The actor and dancer, most famous for his roles in 1958’s “Tom Thumb” and 1961’s “West Side Story,” remembered his friend through his daughter, actress Amber Tamblyn, who took to Instagram to share his anguish. 

“My father is heartbroken,” Amber wrote. “Debbie was like a sister to him. He left her a message yesterday. He didn’t get to say goodbye.” 

Russ, who turns 82 on Dec. 30, starred with Debbie in the 1955 movie-musical “Hit the Deck,” but the pair were more than co-stars ― they were friends in a classic age of Hollywood. 

Relive their chemistry by watching this scene from “Hit the Deck.”

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When Armands Alps and his wife Dace were expecting their first child together in 2013, they made an adorable time-lapse video to document the pregnancy.

The video went viral, warming hearts around he world, so it was only natural that the Latvian parents kept up the tradition for their second baby. The Alps’ new time-lapse video is another stop-motion chronicle of Dace’s growing belly ― shown through about 500 photos.

The dad and big sister also join in the fun of preparing for baby’s arrival. Watch the sweet family’s pregnancy journey in the video above.

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In an interview with the American Film Institute, the late Debbie Reynolds recounted her days on the set of the musical film “Singin’ in the Rain.” 

“I would cry and hide under the piano,” after dance rehearsals, she explained, underscoring the rumor that the environment of Gene Kelly’s 1952 hit was a bit tense. “I was like, ‘I can’t learn this anymore.’ I’m banging on the floor. ‘This is too hard. Oy vey.’ Sobbing away ... I was 17.”

That’s right. The great Debbie Reynolds was only a teenager when she started filming the movie. At that time, she had no dance experience at all ― “Singin’ in the Rain” was her first leading role. Yet she was expected to move toe-to-toe, literally, with a 40-year-old Kelly, who at that time was in his dancing, directing and choreographing prime.

And she did.

“I had to learn all of that [choreography] in six months, and I had never danced before,” Reynolds told NPR. “I had to keep up with the boys.”

So the story (that she’s told many times herself) goes, the legendary actor and dancer Fred Astaire helped her through rough times on set. He invited the often discouraged Reynolds to his own rehearsal space, where he, as she described it to AFI, would “die creating steps.” Afterward, Astaire asked Reynolds, “You see how hard it is? It never gets easier. This is the way it is. You go learn it.”

“It showed me, even the greats find it hard to be really excellent,” she added to NPR, “but you have to keep striving.”

And keep striving she did. In her memoir, Debbie, Reynolds likens her time working on “Singin’ in the Rain” to childbirth: they “were the hardest things I ever had to do in my life.” Several accounts of her hard work ethic allege that Reynolds practiced so relentlessly for her “Good Morning” scene that capillaries in her feet burst, and crew members had to carry her off the set.

Reynolds, who died on Wednesday ― just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher’s death ― went on to star in other films and musicals (1959’s “Say One For Me,” 1964’s “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” 1977’s “Annie Get Your Gun” revival, just to name a few), dancing and singing her way around many more Hollywood veterans.

She, the amateur performer of “Singin’ in the Rain,” became an acting icon ― but we should remember her as a dancing one, too. While her raw talent paled in comparison to the tapping sensation that Kelly was, she ― like so many women before and after her ― worked tirelessly to prove herself among the ranks of her already established and respected male colleagues.

It’s no small secret that, over the decades, women in Hollywood have had to fight for success while their male counterparts have enjoyed a level of comfortability long out of starlets’ reach. Reynolds, a product of the so-called Golden Age of films, and her persistent attitude helped set the stage for young actresses today, who are rallying for equal compensation across their industry.

To honor Reynold’s unforgettable career, we might look to a platitude commonly associated with another venerable dancer. Just like we shouldn’t forget Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did ― but backward and in high heels ― we shouldn’t forget that Reynolds attempted everything Kelly did, but with no experience and at over 20 years his junior.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda knows exactly what he’ll be fighting for during Donald Trump’s presidency.

In an extensive interview with The Daily Beast posted Tuesday, the genius behind “Hamilton: An American Musical” spoke candidly about his post-Election Day feelings and the causes he will continue to fight for during Trump’s administration. 

“I woke up with a very pronounced case of moral clarity,” Miranda told the website. “In addition to the disappointment, it was like, oh, this does not change the things that I believe in. The things that I believe in that this candidate doesn’t means we’re going to have to fight for them.”

Miranda believes LGBTQ rights and the disenfranchisement of voters of color are something we can’t backtrack on. 

“We have to keep fighting for the things we believe in, and [the election’s result] just made that very clear: I know who I am, and I know what I’m going to fight for in the years to come,” he added.

Psychologist Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda, a Planned Parenthood Action Fund board member, as well as Lin-Manuel’s mother, wrote a moving op-ed about why it’s so important to continue to support the organization in Vogue earlier this month. To that end, her son is currently leading a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood via the fundraising platform Prizeo. A $10 donation provides a chance to win tickets to see “Hamilton” in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. He explained to The Daily Beast why he’s such a staunch supporter of the organization. 

“My mother has her own personal stories with Planned Parenthood,” he said. “That’s an organization that’s really saved lives time and again. The thing it’s controversial for [abortion] is a very small part of the health services it provides, and so, like I said, this is a way to support something that is so important. It’s a no-brainer, and the fun bonus is that my mom gets to look like the cool board member because of our efforts. I’m happy to support it, and that’s just that. Women’s health is a priority, it’s worth protecting, and if I can be of service in that way, then that’s how I’ll be of service. Full stop.”

AMEN. 

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Ex-Twitter bully Milo Yiannopoulos may have been taken offline, but now he’ll be in print. 

The “alt-right” editor at Breitbart News just signed a $250,000 book deal with Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, as per an exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter. 

Threshold Editions told The Huffington Post in an email that the book will be called Dangerous and is set to be released on March 14, 2017. The imprint summarized the book by stating:

DANGEROUS will be a book on free speech by the outspoken and controversial gay British writer and editor at Breitbart News who describes himself as “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet.”   

“They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off. Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened,” Yiannopoulos told THR. “Did it hurt Madonna being banned from MTV in the 1990s? Did all that negative press hurt Donald Trump’s chances of winning the election?”

Are you irritated yet? Because if you are, you’re not alone. Twitter has been in an uproar since the news broke. The irony of this, of course, is that Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter after orchestrating a widespread, pernicious attack against “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones.

Here are some of the choice enraged tweets:

For what it’s worth, the Threshold imprint’s tagline is “Celebrating 10 Years of Being Right!” They’ve published works from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and President-elect Donald Trump.

Of the partnership with the imprint, Yiannopoulos told THR that he “met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions.”

“I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building,” he added, “but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.”

The 33-year-old has been responsible for incendiary headlines on Breitbart like “Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

Well, 2017, you’re already looking terrible in our book.

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Debbie Reynolds was best known as a Hollywood song-and-dance icon.

She played her most notable roles in the 1950s and ’60s, in movies such as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” But the 84-year-old actress, who died Wednesday, just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher’s untimely death, experimented with a variation of roles throughout her 68-year career. She affected generations with her undeniable talent, even making a significant impression in children’s programming.

Here are a few notable and surprising roles Reynolds tackled later on in her career. You may have forgotten, or never knew, she played them:

She voiced Charlotte in Hanna-Barbera’s animated movie “Charlotte’s Web.”

She played Bobbi Adler, Grace’s mother, in “Will and Grace.”

She voiced Lulu Pickles, Tommy Pickles’ step-grandmother, in “Rugrats.”

She played Aggie Cromwell in “Halloweentown.”

Reynolds’ “Halloweentown” co-star Kimberly J. Brown remembered the actress on Facebook, writing in part, “Her sparkly smile warmed every room she was in, and her jokes about her amazing career and life would make your stomach hurt with laughter. Making people happy through her performing was her favorite thing to do, and she showed me at a young age what a gift it is to be able to do that for people.”

Rest in peace, Debbie Reynolds.

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On the whole, 2016 was not an easy year for women. America’s president-elect became a president-elect after footage was released of him saying, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them [...] I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

In filmmaking, gender parity developments weren’t as bleak. In January, The New York Times reported an uptick in films directed by women; in 2015, nine percent of top-grossing films had women at the helm, a two percent increase from the previous year. It’s small, but it’s something. No one ever said progress would come in floods, or even a steady stream.

Behind this progress, there’s a fleet of vocal screenwriters, directors, producers and actresses ― some of whom speak up because they’re constantly barraged with gender-related questions, others because parity is a focal point of their work. We talked with several of them this year, ranging from household names like Sally Field to directors toiling away at short filmmaking, hoping to secure feature-length funding.

Below is a sampling of takeaways on how to achieve gender equality in the film industry, culled from some of our favorite 2016 interviews and profiles.

“Carrie Pilby” screenwriter Kara Holden on creating flawed female characters:

“Hugh Grant can get away with it. And ‘High Fidelity,’ I mean, John Cusack’s character is a mess, but you love him. You love him. I feel like, you know, that’s another way that gender equality needs to come in. We need to allow women characters to have all facets. To be flawed, to be wonderful, to be frustrating, to be inspiring. Because we are all those things. Period.”

Read more here.  

We need to allow women characters to have all facets.
Kara Holden

Actress Janelle Monáe on working as a black woman in Hollywood:

“We’re all connected. We need allies, period. We’re the minority. It’s not something I look at as a weakness, or like we should play victims. It is simply highlighting our collective voices and saying that it’s important to highlight the stories of these nuanced individuals so that when we’re out in the real world and we come across someone that feels familiar, that feels like the character you saw on TV, you think differently on how you treat them. We deserve to have the same opportunities, the same respect as any other person in society.”

Read more here.

“Maggie’s Plan” director Rebecca Miller on production companies’ harmful diversity quota mentality:

“Not every man who directs a movie about the mafia is himself in the mafia. That means that women might be able to direct films that don’t directly line up with their realm of experience. It’s almost like a quota mentality. I think this goes for women and minorities both. [Movie executives] say, ‘We really want a woman to direct this movie.’ The minute you say that, you mean that we’re all the same. Any woman could direct this movie, and it doesn’t matter which one?”

Read more here.

We deserve to have the same opportunities, the same respect as any other person in society.
Janelle Monae

Actress Sally Field on the persistence of gender inequity in filmmaking:

“Listen, it’s always been difficult for women. That’s nothing new. You could look at the statistics in ’79 or ’80, when I did ‘Norma Rae.’ It’s always been difficult for women — that is just the way it is. It’s a good thing that people are standing up and hollering now. It isn’t just women now standing up and hollering, and I think if it were just women, we would be silenced again, as usual.”

Read more here.

Filmmaker Kiki Lambden Stout on the more diverse medium of short film:

“Most shorts are financed independently so short filmmakers don’t have to ask permission to cast actors of color or older actors. Women directors don’t have to wait for a studio to hire them to get a chance behind the camera.”

Read more here.

Women directors don’t have to wait for a studio to hire them to get a chance behind the camera.
Kiki Lambden Stout

Actress Viola Davis on race and opportunity:

“I probably have the same kind of past as a Julianne Moore or a Sigourney Weaver or any of them, but they far surpassed me in terms of their opportunity. And that’s the difference. Your work and what you invest in your talent doesn’t match the opportunity of the narratives that are out there. So you have to take all that you have and pour it into [playing] the detective in ‘Disturbia.’”

Read more here. 

“Mustang” director Deniz Gamze Ergüven on writing intimate scenes about girlhood:

“It’s so funny the things you say inside of a sisterhood. ‘Who has one boob that’s bigger than the other? Your ass is fatter.’ There’s all that ping-ponging that’s very prevalent. It’s part of my intimate experience.”

Read more here.

Yes, having more women behind the camera is just as, if not more, important than still continuing to try and make more roles for women in Hollywood.
Judy Greer

Director and actress Judy Greer on a transition to working behind the camera:

“There’s been a lot of talk in the last year or two about more roles for women, but I think that it really starts at getting more women in positions to hire women and make movies about women and to cast women in movies. So yes, having more women behind the camera is just as, if not more, important than still continuing to try and make more roles for women in Hollywood, in television and in film. And I’m excited to be a part of that.” 

Read more here.

Writer and curator Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan on woman directing genre films:

“I love genre, in all its forms — Western, horror, noir, sci-fi. That’s my passion. And as a filmgoer I always resisted the idea of “women films” — or “men films,” for that matter. I think it is important to embrace women that don’t subscribe to those clichés. The idea that a woman director has, by definition, less affinity for an action scene than a male one is silly. Kathryn Bigelow can out-direct most of her male colleagues in Hollywood. It’s a matter of vision, talent, stylistic and poetic inclinations. Not gender.”

Read more here.

Kathryn Bigelow can out-direct most of her male colleagues in Hollywood.
Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan

Actress Isabelle Huppert on her character in “Elle”:

“It’s like giving birth to a new prototype of a woman. Of course it’s a fiction character and it’s certainly not someone you would meet walking in the subway, meaning it’s not a completely realistic character. But it’s a very, very special character. Even in fiction, you’ve never seen someone like her.”

Read more here.

Filmmaker Catherine Fordham on directing a violent short film starring a tough heroine:

“I wanted to make a film that wasn’t about a superhero, or a physically powerful woman, but just an ordinary woman with a fire inside her. What strength is possible if we can tap into that power?”

Read more here.

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Just one day her daughter Carrie Fisher passed away, Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds died on Wednesday at the age of 84. Her reported last words were, “I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie.” 

As the world mourns the loss of these two icons, we’ve compiled photos of the mother-daughter duo throughout the years. 

Keep scrolling for 26 photos of Reynolds and Fisher over their 60 years of life together.

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Debbie Reynolds’ son has concluded that his mother died of “heartache.” Todd Fisher told ABC News that Reynolds collapsed on Wednesday while making funeral arrangements for her daughter, Carrie Fisher, who died one day earlier. 

“She was very peaceful and quiet,” Todd said. “It happened very gently.”

Todd said his mother, who was 84, regretted not being able to say goodbye to her daughter. Half an hour after saying she wanted to be with Carrie again, Reynolds collapsed at Todd’s home. She suffered a stroke and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors said nothing could be done to revive the “Singin’ in the Rain” star. Reynolds died a few hours later. 

“She loved taking care of my sister more than anything,” Todd, 58, said. “So, she gets to do that and that’s what she wanted to do.”

Reynolds and the “Star Wars” actress always had a rocky relationship, as satirized in the 1990 show-biz comedy “Postcards from the Edge,” adapted from Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Carrie’s parents divorced when she was young, after her father, singer Eddie Fisher, left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor. Fisher was constantly referred to as “Debbie Reynolds’ daughter,” an image complicated by Carrie’s bipolar diagnosis as a teenager.

But as the years progressed, their relationship strengthened. Fisher’s autobiographical writing became a form of therapy, and she spoke generously of her mother’s struggles as a famous parent. 

“She’s an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much,” Fisher said in an interview with NPR last month. “She also annoys me sometimes when she’s mad at the nurses, but she’s an extraordinary woman. Extraordinary. There’s very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again. I mean, she’s had an amazing life, and she’s someone to admire.”

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Oy with the poodles, already!

On Wednesday, Netflix sent out a tweet that made many fans of “Gilmore Girls” arch their brows.

The show’s revival, which debuted on Netflix over Thanksgiving weekend, was supposed to be a stand-alone series made to give fans and creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, a little bit of closure. The reboot even featured the last four words Sherman-Palladino had always intended to end the show with. (She didn’t have the opportunity to throw them in during the series’ original run due to her departure before the final season.)

But boy, were those four words — spoken between Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter, Rory — open-ended.

So much so that many believe the show has to run more episodes. Even Lauren Graham, who plays Lorelai, thinks the four words seem more like a cliffhanger than a conclusion, which she mentions multiple times in her memoir, Talking as Fast as I Can.

So when Netflix tweeted out something that makes it sound like there may be more “Gilmore Girls” in our near future, fans freaked. 

(Warning: if you don’t know the four words already, this tweet will pretty much give it away.)

The tweet is a throwback reference to April Nardini’s science fair project in Season 6, which allowed her to discover that Luke Danes was her biological father. Except, this version is tailored to Rory’s life. It features three men whom Rory slept with during the series ― her ex-boyfriend Logan Huntzberger, a random dude in a Wookiee costume and Paul, Rory’s boyfriend throughout the revival whom she finds so unremarkable that she forgets that she’s dating him.

The post also seemingly implies that a future Gilmore girl will be searching for her father, hence more episodes.

People’s reactions on Twitter were mixed.

Some were overjoyed with the sort-of, not really news:

And some feel like the oddball ending suited the show perfectly and it should be left alone:

Preach, Emily. Preach!

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You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture.

We tend to love platitudes about fiction. Ken Kesey has been quoted saying, “To hell with facts! We need stories!” The late Alan Rickman declared that “it’s a human need to be told stories.” Joan Didion’s rendition of the same sentiment may be the most famous: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

It’s easy to deem 2016 a year of unpleasant stories. In America, we recounted prized anecdotes about David Bowie, Prince and Carrie Fisher upon their respective deaths; we watched as an alarming faction of the country proved its media illiteracy by perpetuating one phony news report after the next; we listened to the heartache that followed shootings in Orlando, Baton Rouge and Charlotte; most notably, we concocted narratives to explain the jarring election of Donald Trump, a bloviator who spun enough yarns to appeal to the electorate’s basest prejudices. 

Then there were the stories we saw on the big screen, which, literally speaking, had little to do with 2016’s quagmires. Hollywood started cooking them up before anyone knew the “Celebrity Apprentice” host was a viable presidential candidate. But as a movie journalist who has plowed through the cinematic harvest, I’ve noticed a handful of films emphasizing the power of American myths ― the same myths that perhaps contributed to the most morally polarizing year in modern history. 

Yes, if only we could access the empathy derived from the heptapods’ seamless global communication in “Arrival.” Maybe then I could easily convey the powerful messages scrawled across the silver screen over the past 52 weeks. Maybe then I could tell parents who scorn the internet’s talk of “identity politics” that, in taking their kids to see “Zootopia” and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” they exposed them to parables about the evils of social persecution. Or that “Moana” buried notes of global outreach in its Polynesian spiritual adventure. All four movies make noble cases for eradicating rigid assumptions about people who look different or behave in ways that don’t reflect the limited images in our bathroom mirrors.

No one can adequately argue that President Obama waved his magic wand and commissioned a post-racial America. Yet pundits and idealists alike foresaw a 2016 presidential outcome more reflective of the inclusive nation they thought we’d become. Was that merely a movie playing in our heads, offering “La La Land”-level escapism?

Because most of 2016’s films were greenlighted several years ago, they are, in some ways, a reflection of the halfway mark of Obama’s eight-year term, which itself reflects the aftermath of the war-torn Bush era. In Trump’s America, their significance intensifies. “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” the story of Iraq War soldiers being paraded about at a Thanksgiving Day football game, attempted to reckon with this complicated ecosystem. The Ang Lee-directed adaptation of Ben Fountain’s novel wallowed in technical missteps, but it offered one resounding message: Patriotism, as it exists in gratuitous public displays, is a sham. At every turn, it became clear the “Billy Lynn” soldiers were capitalistic ploys, a money grab for the NFL and a Hollywood producer attempting to turn their story into a movie. If nationalism isn’t televised, can it exist?

Fleeing capitalism in search of ostensibly freeing alternatives provided mixed results for the protagonists of “American Honey” and “Captain Fantastic.” In the former, 18-year-old Star (Sasha Lane) escapes a run-down home life and a predatory father to join a tribe of young misfits who travel through the heartland peddling door-to-door magazine subscriptions. She’s attracted to the group because they seem liberated. Alas, they are gamed by a system in which cashflow does not trickle down enough to provide abundant resources. Star and her cohort trade traditional vocations for the open road ― but this particular open road makes them submissive to corporate greed. The leader of Star’s pack (Riley Keough) punishes under-performers, creating her own form of capitalism: Make money or get the hell out. 

In “Captain Fantastic,” Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) raises his six kids in a private enclave in the Pacific Northwest, teaching them to eschew societal conventions. All they need are nature, survival skills and one another. Not recognizing the holes in his plan, Ben ultimately comes to terms with the concept of balance. Maybe living in the world proper, with all its infantilizing strictures, isn’t ideal. But no matter who holds the highest office, abandoning society in hopes of finding nirvana is a delusion.  

At the movies this year, stories underlined the difficulties of carving out freedom in the face of patriarchal models. In “Moonlight,” a latchkey kid (played in various phases by Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes) came of age by safeguarding his queerness with the armor of performative masculinity. In “20th Century Women,” a single mother (Annette Bening) in 1979 California tried to raise her teenage son (Lucas Jade Zumann) to be a “good man,” proclaiming, “I don’t know how you do that nowadays.” (Good question.) In “Loving” and “Hidden Figures,” black women rose above the white men holding ostensible power. They become stronger superheroes than the title characters in the impossibly grim “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” In the documentary “Weiner,” Huma Abedin ― a political savant with Hillary Clinton loyalties ― stood at her husband’s side while his sexual misconduct embarrassed her (again) in front of the world. Five months after its release, women statistically refused to accept that Trump had embarrassed his own wife with boasts of harassment. All of these movies’ subtext spotlighted cultural constructs’ vicious cycles.

Because of such constructs, this country has forever been obsessed with its image ― that’s why notions of “the American dream” and “American exceptionalism” prevail. Perhaps the greatest homegrown image-making on the big screen this year stemmed from two sketches of modern history: the 7.5-hour documentary “O.J.: Made in America” and the unconventional psychodrama “Jackie,” which leaps inside Jacqueline Kennedy’s head during the events leading up to and immediately following her husband’s 1963 assassination. Both tackle the power fame holds in molding public figures’ legacies. If there’s anything America can agree to love, it’s celebrities. 

In “O.J.: Made in America,” Ezra Edelman thoroughly traces O.J. Simpson’s evolution from national hero ― an emblem of America as a land of opportunity ― to disruptive multimillionaire. The 1994 Simpson trial not only birthed reality television as we know it; it also conjured up a race war fought behind closed doors. It is only with hindsight that most of the country can view Simpson’s alleged murder of his wife as something other than an arraignment of the country’s fractured values. Throughout the trial, Simpson and his legal team tried to write the athlete’s own story. At the time, they succeeded, at least in the eyes of the law.

Similarly, Jackie Kennedy knew better than to leave her family’s political legacy to history. Upon her philandering husband’s murder, the first lady orchestrated a public funeral that matched the grandeur of Abraham Lincoln’s. One week later, she spoon-fed the famous Camelot analogy to a Life magazine reporter who wrote of the Kennedy White House as “one brief, shining moment” of splendor. (In terms of political achievements, it was not.) Both “O.J.: Made in America” and “Jackie” offer portraits of fame as driven by media accounts, by shape-shifting narratives where race and gender play supporting roles. 

“People like to believe in fairy tales,” Jackie (Natalie Portman) says in the movie. Oh, what the glamorous Kennedys would say of Donald and Melania Trump and the merry band of boors who will enter the White House alongside them next month. It is the very opposite of a fairy tale, and yet the Trump camp convinced enough (read: too much) of the country that the populist escape they sought would be obstructed by a “nasty woman” (read: qualified candidate) on the other side of the aisle. What image of America does that convey? Certainly not one of intersectionality, despite the diverse stories that graced multiplexes this year. It instead conveys a process of image-making, specifically an image that tacitly mythologizes the idea that equality is an obstacle to those who have always enjoyed privilege (read: heterosexual white men). If we know things are going to get worse, is life still worth living? “Arrival” argues yes. Now we must too.

We are, in essence, a country of myths. Like Chiron realized in “Moonlight,” we endorse masculinity at a rate that disenfranchises even those who refuse to acknowledge they are disenfranchised (see, again: female Trump voters). We define heroism by comic books, as in “Doctor Strange,” in which a surgical superstar (Benedict Cumberbatch) is whisked to a magical land with a sensei named The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Never mind that the character in the comics is Asian and Swinton is British. The message Marvel sent in changing The Ancient One’s ethnicity? The story’s roots don’t matter as long as it’s entertaining.

Here’s another myth: We insist, as if life were a romantic comedy, that marriage is our end game. “The Lobster” satirizes that idea, while “Bad Moms” blanches at its conventions, portraying perfect marital companionship as unrealistic. And in a trio of ill-advised stories about the Trumpian theme of gaslighting ― “The Girl on the Train,” “Collateral Beauty” and “Passengers” ― we see that trusting others to protect us does not always yield the storybook results we are taught to expect. Maybe we should move to Zootopia.

All of this is to say that life proved just as complicated on the big screen in 2016 as it did elsewhere. Movies are the most fascinating reflections of reality, constantly arriving with a rearview-mirror perspective that often remains resonant long after their release dates. The reactionary artwork that we’ll see throughout the Trump years may twist some of these myths, especially if the electorate relies on the troubling stories it is currently telling itself about this impending presidency. But to remain the shining city on a hill that America wants to be, it’ll have to face some realities. It’ll have to redefine its stories. The movies that opened this year already knew that. Why didn’t our voters?

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