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Gilmore Girls star Scott Cohen has spoken about the life-threatening car collision that nearly claimed his life earlier this year.

The actor, 62, was driving home in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Anastasia Traina, when their vehicle was struck by that of a suspect in a high-speed car chase.

He was asked about the crash while on the red carpet for the premiere of The Penguin, HBO Max’s new serialised spin-off of The Batman.

“We thought we were dead,” he told Page Six. “My wife’s arm is all messed up. I have a broken sternum, which is supposed to be never-healing. It’s like called a nonunion break, and it’s never going to heal.”

The driver of the vehicle that crashed into Cohen’s car was being pursued by police at the time. After the crash, the suspect’s car is reported to have burst into flames, with the suspect leaving on foot and exchanging gunfire with law enforcement.

Cohen previously shared a photo of himself in hospital for treatment, alongside a caption acknowledging “the fragility of us and how life can change in an instant”.

“With broken bones, bruised bodies, lots of drugs, and the impact of a random act of aggression that hit us we venture on,” he wrote.

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“I’m very pissed my existence right now is about healing but at the same time truly grateful @afunnybunnypicture and I are both here to experience the love and incredible generosity of friends and family.”

Cohen is probably best known for playing the role of Max Medina in the hit WB series Gilmore Girls.

The Penguin sees him star opposite Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti in a dark drama set in the criminal underworld of Batman’s Gotham City.

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In a three-star review for The Independent, Nick Hilton wrote: “Most people won’t be watching The Penguin as anything more than a Batman spin-off. In this sense, it’s more akin to Todd Phillips’s Joker than the rest of the caped crusader’s world.

“Farrell’s Penguin is very human: flawed but ambitious, unappealing but confident. The Oscar-nominated actor gives what I suspect is a good performance, but he’s unrecognisable, caked under layers of prosthetics and a fat suit. Farrell is a leading man, with leading man good looks. I don’t quite understand the logic of hiring and then hiding him, rather than just casting someone a better physical match for the character. It feels like he’s taking food out of the mouths of Paul Giamatti’s children.”

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Keegan-Michael Key has addressed his separation from former creative partner Jordan Peele, describing their lack of contact as a “tragedy”.

Key, 53 and Peele, 45, first worked together on the sketch series Mad TV between 2004 and 2009, before collaborating as a double act on a run of projects, including their own acclaimed comedy show Key & Peele.

However, the pair have stopped working together in recent years, with Key increasingly focusing on acting roles and Peele establishing himself as one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation. Their most recent project was the 2022 Henry Selick animation Wendell & Wild, for which they contributed vocal parts. Before this, the pair were last seen onscreen together in the 2016 film Keanu.

Speaking to People magazine, Key reflected on first meeting Peele. “We lived together for a few months and would write and talk about comedy – who we liked and why we liked them and how that worked in the architecture of what we were trying to build comedically,” he said.

“When we were on camera, it was alchemy. It was just like, ‘Why is this working?’”

However, the Super Mario Bros Movie star noted that he and Peele “don’t see each other that often anymore… which is, to me, a tragedy.”

Exacerbating matters is the fact that Key and Peele now live in different parts of the US: Peele in Los Angeles and Key in New York.

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“Your lives start to evolve and move in different directions,” he continued. “Our evolution, I think, is tied to both of what our desires are. His desire was to start exploring the horror genre, and my desire was to do more dramatic work like I had been trained in school.

“Both of us jumped to another platform [following the success of Key & Peele], but we needed that first platform.”

Peele has directed three features to date: Oscar-nominated horror satire Get Out, Us, and Nope.

Reflecting on their different roles on Key & Peele, Key said: “I was playing the clown more and doing more physical comedy in the beginning of our time together, and then I found myself evolving into playing more of the straight roles and teeing up Jordan to play the clown.”

The actor can next be seen in Transformers One, an animated prequel to the popular Transformers franchise.

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Michael Emerson has given his verdict on the divisive final episode of Lost.

The actor, 70, played villainous island native Benjamin Linus in the esoteric plane crash drama, which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

The series is now finding a new lease of life on streaming platform Netflix, onto which all six seasons were added in August.

Emerson claimed Lost ended in a “perfect” way, despite the long-running series having one of the most misunderstood series finales in television history.

*Spoilers follow – you have been warned*

Speaking to Radio Times, Emerson said: “I adored it when we shot it, and I like it even better with the passage of time. I think it’s a wonderful conclusion.”

Season six of the show presented the concept that the island was a metaphorical cork bottling up some very bad things that, if unleashed into civilisation, would cause all kinds of destruction.

Emerson continued: “I always say, every show dictates its own ending by the form of its narrative, by the way it was constructed. So a show like Lost can’t have the same ending as something more linear or conventional.

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“It was a fantasy and an allegory exploding out from the centre,” he explained. “So to end it, you must bring all the parts back to the centre, I think. At least, it seems to me, that that was what they were attempting to do.

“To me, it was really satisfying – particularly if you’re playing Benjamin Linus and you’re left outside the gates of the hereafter on a cold stone bench because you haven’t earned it yet. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ It really was perfect. And sad too, in a way.”

The actor added: “The work mirrored the social ending of the family. All my friends in the cast were trooping by to go off to some golden paradise, and I’m there saying goodbye as they pass. And it was the end of things. It was the end of that golden adventure, in addition to the show.”

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Emmy award-winning series Lost originally aired in 2004 and drew to a close in 2010. Its ensemble cast included Evangeline Lilly, Elizabeth Mitchell and Josh Holloway.

Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told EW in 2017 that they’d planned to end the show with a huge volcano eruption but the idea was scuppered by budget reasons. “We were always looking to cannibalise anything on Hawaii to aid in the visual storytelling of the show,“ Cuse said.

“We also thought of the island as a character on the show, so we were always looking for things that would give it more personality.”