Given the overwhelming amount of sleep advice out there, it can be hard to define what “good” sleep actually means, never mind how to achieve it.
But a white paper from Vitality and The London School of Economics and Political Science has suggested that two numbers – “7-1” – provide a way to “distil the science into a simple rule of thumb”.
What is the “7-1” rule?
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The approach, which they estimate could add up to four years to your life and boost the economy, is simple: “aim for seven hours of sleep per night, anchored to a consistent bedtime and falling asleep within a one-hour window (half an hour on either side)”.
Though not included in the name, they added, sticking to this rule at least five nights a week is key to seeing the benefits.
Some previous research has found that sleep consistency is a better indicator of mortality risk than sleep duration. This paper said that falling asleep consistently within a one-hour window lowers mortality risk by 31% and in-hospital admissions by 9%.
Meanwhile, seven hours of sleep is linked to better cognitive performance and mental health among older and middle-aged adults.
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Currently, the paper adds, only about 10% of us are believed to meet this standard, which they linked to four additional years of life and “a higher quality of health” throughout.
“Even if one in four poor sleepers were to shift to this sleep pattern, the potential gains would be substantial: reduced healthcare utilisation and costs, improved workplace productivity, and a measurable reduction in premature mortality.”
Rugby league is cherished by many of the ‘left behind’ towns that become central to Britain’s electoral politics. But now community clubs are fighting to stay afloat, reports Adam Payne
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In the run-up to Boris Johnson’s red wall landslide in 2019, rugby league found itself in a peculiar position. Its fans, based mostly in northern England, generally regard the London class, its politicians and media, as having little interest in their sport.
To generations of supporters, it is an ignored and underappreciated game, played a long way from the corridors of Westminster in mileage and in mind, in the towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
“Rugby union has always been the sport of the establishment, the media, Westminster, big businesses, even the Royal Family. Rugby league, like most things in the North, it had to fight just to be heard,” says Anthony Broxton, author of Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain.
Naturally, then, there was some bemusement when, in autumn 2019, the spotlight of British politics landed on the Cumbrian coast. Onward, the centre-right think tank with close links to the Conservative Party, had declared rugby league towns to be pivotal to that year’s general election. A new voter archetype had been born: Workington Man.
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Will Tanner, one of the brains behind the analysis, who was later chief of staff to Rishi Sunak in No 10, recalls when he and Onward colleague Nick Faith realised that rugby league towns were where key swing voters were hiding.
“When I was listing constituencies we thought would be most important, [Faith] was the one who said nearly all of them are rugby league towns. That was the common denominator, and it was something incredibly resonant and powerful,” Tanner tells The House.
Featherstone Rovers in Yorkshire were not allowed to take part in this season’s competition after falling into administration (Alamy)
Workington Man, set out in Onward’s subsequent report, The Politics of Belonging, was, generally speaking, a retired, non-university-educated male who backed Brexit and valued local pride and security in a fast-changing world. Johnson went on to turn swathes of rugby league towns from Labour red to Conservative blue. Trudy Harrison, the then newly elected Tory MP for Workington’s local rival, Whitehaven, was made his parliamentary private secretary.
Fast forward a few years, and rugby league certainly feels more relevant in Westminster. In Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the game has a genuine fan in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet; the Wigan MP tells The House it is “very close to my heart”. The same is true of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.
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The knighting last year of legend Sir Billy Boston sparked tentative hope within the game that rugby league would finally play a bigger part in the national story, and there is optimism that Kevin Sinfield will soon be a knight of the realm after raising millions for Motor Neurone Disease research in memory of his former teammate, Rob Burrow. At Labour Conference in Liverpool in September, MPs and ex-players booted up for a tag war of the roses.
Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, was fundamental to how people were thinking
But up in the sport’s traditional heartlands, all is not well.
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At the heart of the Workington Man analysis was voters in rugby league towns feeling that their local areas were crumbling – their high streets, post offices, pubs – leaving them feeling disheartened and disconnected. And perhaps nothing better captures that sense of community identity than the local rugby league club.
“Community and belonging, through those rugby league clubs, were fundamental to how people were thinking,” reflects Tanner.
The liquidation of Halifax in February stunned the town and disturbed the wider game. How could a 153-year-old club, a cherished community asset, simply cease to exist?
“There was so much shock across the community,” says Kate Dearden, Labour MP for Halifax. “To not have rugby in the town was unthinkable for lots of people.”
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Halifax has since returned to the second division under new ownership, albeit with a 12-point deduction, after two weeks of frantic negotiations. It was a “huge, huge relief”, adds Dearden, who says people “travelled miles” to be at the club’s return to the pitch at the start of March.
“It made us sit back and reflect on the importance of rugby league to the town. When you’re so close to losing it – the emotional impact of that on people.”
the town has lost a part of its soul
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Lower league sides like your author’s hometown club, Barrow, have recently been forced to crowdfund to stay afloat due to a lack of home fixtures, while Featherstone has been blocked from entering this season’s competition after falling into administration, leaving the West Yorkshire town without a rugby league team until at least 2027.
“The closure of the club has been really, really bad for morale in the area. Even people who don’t necessarily go to watch the match still think Featherstone Rovers is part of their identity,” says Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth. “At the moment, the town has lost a part of its soul.”
A local crowdfunding effort, led by the True Blue Revival Group, has raised thousands of pounds in a bid to put the club in a position to enter next season under new ownership. “For some people, [the club] is their whole life,” organisers Gareth Dyas and Jock Higgins recently told the BBC.
Why are heartlands club struggling? David Baines, Labour MP for St Helens North and chair of the Rugby League All-Party Parliamentary Group, says falling crowd numbers, driven in part by cost-of-living pressures, are an important factor.
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“The communities that they represent, smaller towns in the North of England, are struggling areas. They have less money in their pockets to spend,” he explains.
“People have got difficult choices about where their money goes,” he continues. “Twenty years ago, Netflix didn’t exist, Amazon Prime didn’t exist, Apple TV didn’t exist. Plus WiFi, mobile phone costs…. entertainment that isn’t sport, that isn’t leaving the house. Traditional sports, like rugby league, are competing with that.”
Baines also believes the game has struggled in the face of football, which “dominates absolutely everything”, particularly for younger generations.
There is hope that former rugby league player Kevin Sinfield will be knighted after raising millions for MND research (Alamy)
The Labour MP hopes that the government will be persuaded to look again at loans that were granted to rugby league clubs via the Rugby Football League (RFL) to help them survive the pandemic. Of the near £3m owed by Featherstone when it was put into administration, reportedly around £320,000 was Covid loan repayments owed to the Treasury.
“It’s something I’ve heard from clubs and raised with ministers, with Lisa Nandy and Steph Peacock. The APPG has discussed it. It’s something I’d definitely like the government to look at,” he says, floating the idea, for example, of extending the repayment period to ease the financial strain on clubs.
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The RFL’s interim chief executive, Abi Ekoku, says the body was “fully committed to its fiscal responsibility to government” but had suggested to ministers ways “of how best we might balance Covid loan repayment obligations with the need to preserve and upgrade rugby league’s vital community infrastructure”.
He tells The House: “Grassroots rugby league plays a significant anchoring role in many of the UK’s most economically challenged areas. The sport’s social dividend is a very well-known and highly regarded part of Northern England’s social fabric. As such, we are keen to see Covid loan repayments redirected into facilities that help to deliver stability and purpose for the volunteer-led and resource-poor community game”.
Nandy acknowledges that the debt is adding to the problems facing rugby league clubs on “multiple fronts” but says that writing it off altogether is “off the agenda” as government would “have to do it” for other sports. “Forgiving the debt would open the floodgates for other stressed sports,” she says.
In terms of where ministers can help rugby league, Nandy says it must ensure it has “proper systems and governance in place going forwards, that they can act as a cohesive unit and that they can maximise the broadcast revenue that is available”.
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She adds that she has been “working closely with a number of the clubs” and talking regularly to the figures in the game to support a plan to “pool their resources so that they get better broadcasters”. The amount of Sky TV money that goes to rugby league clubs has fallen significantly in recent years.
Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, pundit and former player Brian Carney said there had to be stronger checks and balances on rugby league club owners (Alamy)
Brian Carney, TV pundit and former player, is one of the game’s most vocal proponents of reform. Speaking to The House in a personal capacity, he says the RFL governing body ought to shoulder blame for not stepping in earlier to stop “avoidable” club disasters.
“What I’d like to see is them [the RFL] getting ahead of these problems, because some of them you can see galloping at you, clear as day,” he says, pointing to players being paid salaries that clubs cannot afford.
Salford recently had to be revived under a new name after being wound up late last year with debts of over £700,000. Carney argues there needs to be stronger checks and balances, whether it be a more proactive RFL or greater government involvement, to address problems before they escalate rather than “after the fact”.
He suggests that English rugby league may ultimately require oversight like the new football regulator to protect the long-term sustainability of clubs. Reckless owners must take some blame when clubs fall into crisis, he says, but “they needed to have harnesses put on them as, otherwise, as in any other sport, they’ll just run amok, and true fans will be left to pick up the pieces”.
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I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game
Despite the challenges, the rugby league community is defiant. “Featherstone will rise again,” declares Trickett.
Baines says: “I’ve lived through a dozen or so so-called apocalypses facing the game. These headlines have been written a lot since 1895 [when rugby league was founded] by people who want to see the game fail… It is facing challenges, but so does every sport in this country.”
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He adds: “Rugby league will still be here in 50 years, 100 years. It will always survive because it’s a great sport to watch, to play, and it’s embedded in communities and loved by hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country.”
Dearden says the speed at which her local community was able to bring Halifax back to life demonstrated the resilience of rugby league fans: “From the get-go, as soon as the news was announced, it was, ‘How do we save our club?’”
Hull KR recently defeated Australia’s Brisbane Broncos to become world champions (Alamy)
There are other reasons for optimism. Crowds are up in the game’s premier division, the Super League, and the early success of York, Bradford and Toulouse’s admission to the league suggests that the contentious franchise model, which determines who plays in the game’s highest bracket, may be starting to bear fruit. Hull, home to the league and world champions, Hull KR, is a fervent rugby league city. KR, Leeds, Warrington and Wigan have played to large crowds in Las Vegas this year and last.
But there is also widespread recognition that if the game is to survive at its lower echelons, then things cannot continue as they are. “There needs to be some deep thinking about how we build community clubs that have a sustainable future. Government should be thinking about this,” says Trickett.
Does the answer lie overseas? There are talks over Australian investment in the English game, which advocates in the northern hemisphere say would bring not just desperately needed cash but expertise that is sorely lacking. While rugby league struggles for national profile in Britain, it is one of the biggest sports in Australia, centred on the National Rugby League (NRL) – brutally demonstrated in Australia’s demolition of England last year.
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Peter V’landys, NRL head, has claimed in rather Trumpian terms that the English game is “heading for a train crash” without new money. “The answers don’t presently lie within,” says Carney. He believes that, ultimately, rugby league heartlands will only be lifted out of their struggles when the sport as a whole is more popular.
“It’s not relevant enough for enough people,” he puts it bluntly. “You can send development officers into schools anywhere in the world to promote a particular sport, but unless those kids are seeing it week in, week out, day in, day out, on TV, on billboards, on magazines, online, [players] modelling clothes or boots, it’s irrelevant. If we can raise the profile of the elite-level competition, all those people working at the grassroots level have an easier job selling the game.”
Baines says the English game would “be daft not to want to explore how we can work together” with Australia, but stresses that it would have to be for “the whole health of the game, from the community game upwards”. According to Broxton, rugby league must be better at telling its story: resistance, survival, “doing things differently”.
“In an age where authenticity is everything, rugby league already has the most powerful asset in sport – a genuine story. All it has to do is own it.”
Donald Trump has warned Iran the United States will “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is re-opened within 48 hours.
The US president issued the ultimatum in an angry post on Truth Social.
Around one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran has been attacking tankers trying to use it since the war began three weeks ago.
That has led to a spike in the price of oil, triggering a potential global economic crisis as energy costs soar.
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Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
It came just a day after Trump said America was preparing to “wind down” its operations in Iran.
In another Truth Social post on Friday, he said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”
He said the Strait of Hormuz “will have to be guarded and policed”, but said that responsibility would fall on other countries which rely on it for their oil supply.
Iranian long-range missiles now have the capability of hitting London, Keir Starmer has been warned.
It comes after Tehran targeted Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands, 3,800 kilometres from Iran’s capital, with two missiles.
One was intercepted by a US warship, with the other failing in flight.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said that showed Iran is now able to target major European capitals
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“We have been saying it: the Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat,” they said. “Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin.”
Diego Garcia houses a joint UK-US military base, and has has been used as a launchpad for American operations in the Middle East for years.
It has a large airfield, major fuel storage facilities, radar installations and a deep-water port and is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper condemned the “reckless” Iranian attack, but insisted the UK was not involved in America’s “offensive” strikes on Tehran.
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She said: “We want to see as swift as possible a resolution to this conflict. Our approach to this conflict has been the same throughout.
“We were not and continue not to be involved in offensive action, and we’ve taken a different view from the US and Israel on this.
“But we are supporting defensive action to support our interests. That includes recognising Iran’s escalating threats to international shipping, as well as their threats to our Gulf partners.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was time for Starmer to “come clean”.
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She said: “Now we find out, from the media and not the prime minister, that the British base on Diego Garcia has been the target of Iranian missile attacks.
“As we saw with Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s first instinct is always to cover up the truth.
“On Wednesday he attacked me at PMQs for calling for the proper defence of our bases, now we learn that as he did so our base in the Chagos Islands was being targeted by Iran.
“The prime minister needs to immediately come clean about the details of this latest attack on British troops and explain why the public weren’t informed sooner.”
This time 15 years ago, some sceptics were seriously still carrying on that tiresome debate about whether a female-led comedy would actually be funny when Bridesmaids arrived on the scene.
Naysayers were more than proven wrong when the comedy came out, and not only made audiences around the world howl with laughter, but became producer Judd Apatow’s highest-grossing film, taking more than £220 million at the box office.
But it wasn’t just the audiences that were won over by the tale of enduring female friendship (and bodily functions). Bridesmaids was also nominated for the Best Musical Or Comedy prize at the Golden Globes, and even earned two Oscar nods, for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s writing and Melissa McCarthy’s performance.
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To mark the movie’s 15th anniversary, the cast (minus Wendy McLendon-Covey, sadly) reunited at the 2026 Academy Awards, giving Bridesmaids fans the world over the urge to rewatch our favourite messy comedy – and sing along to Hold On with Annie and pals.
As many of us revisit the hit movie, we’re taking a peek behind the scenes, and it sounds like it was about as much fun to make as it is to watch.
Here are 23 facts you might not have known about how Bridesmaids came together…
It took five years for Bridesmaids to make it off the page and onto the screen
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Bridesmaids celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2026
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Getting Bridesmaids to the big screen was certainly not a quick and easy task.
The first table read took place in 2007, with Bridesmaids finally appearing on director Paul Feig’s desk five years after he first heard about it. As he put it, the film saved his career.
“In 2010, I was at a low point,” he told Luxury London. “I was directing internet commercials for Macy’s. I was thinking ‘what am I doing with my career?’. Then I got a call out of the blue saying ‘that wedding movie’ is going to happen.”
Paul cites the film as a “game changer” in terms of his filmmaking, because it took him out of movie jail after the commercial failures of I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors.
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Bridesmaids almost had a very different title
Producer Judd Apatow wasn’t originally sold on the film’s title, worried it would put off male cinemagoers.
“To get guys in, we were just going to call it Naked Boobs And Guns, but we didn’t have either one of those things, so we changed it,” Kristen joked to Collider. “We actually had a really hard time, trying to think of the title, to be honest. It was hard.”
In fact, it was nearly called Maid Of Honour, until one of the producers’ friends named his own film that title.
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Director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow behind the scenes of Bridesmaids in the early 2010s
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Several comedy actors almost played Megan, the character who propelled Melissa McCarthy to international fame
It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else in the role of Melissa McCarthy’s boisterous Megan, but a few different people were also in the frame to take on the character, with Paul Feig even claiming that Megan was the most auditioned-for role in the cast.
Speaking to BuzzFeed in 2012, Busy Phillips revealed she was considered for the role, having previously worked with Judd Apatow on the short-lived show Freaks And Geeks.
“The part wasn’t defined necessarily as one thing [when I auditioned],” she recalled. “I was doing a very specific take on it, and they really liked it. But I think, ultimately, Miss McCarthy is perfect in that movie.”
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As well as Busy, Rebel Wilson also auditioned for the part, although she ultimately landed the role of Annie’s roommate, Brynn.
It was actually Kristen Wiig who pointed Bridesmaids’ director towards her friend Melissa McCarthy, who at the time was still best known for Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly
Melissa McCarthy earned an Oscar nomination for her stand-out performance as Megan in Bridesmaids
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Paul Feig told Glamour in 2020: “[Megan] came in and her take on the character was so different than anyone else that it took me a good 10 seconds to even realise what she was doing.”
In a 2011 interview, Paul admitted he was initially unsure why she was playing the character as a “lesbian” doing “weird sex stuff”, before realising he was actually watching a genius at work.
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“The mistake a lot of people make in casting is they get so tied to the words and the character they wrote that they don’t see when somebody is better than what they have on the page,” he claimed.
Melissa McCarthy drew inspiration from an unexpected source when putting together her characterisation of Megan in Bridesmaids
She said: “I wanted to do the shirt, the Kangol. Every scene, I would have my glasses on the back of my head.”
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Unfortunately for the actor (and maybe the audience), the production team reined her in, and stopped her from looking too much like the Food Network star.
“I tried for a long time to convince them to let me wear short, white, spiky hair, and they were like, ‘You can’t actually be Guy Fieri’,” she laughed.
Oh, and if you didn’t know – Melissa McCarthy shares the screen with her real-life husband in Bridesmaids
Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy in January 2019
“Air Marshall Jon” is played by Ben Falcone, with whom Melissa has been married since 2005.
He has also made cameos in almost all of Melissa’s films, including Identity Thief, Spy, The Heat and Can You Ever Forgive Me?.
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Bridesmaids was largely improvised by the cast
While Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo put together a hilarious script, with six Groundlings alum on set, there was always going to be some improvisation in the mix, too.
“I’ll be honest, I can’t remember what was scripted and what came out in improv anymore,” Maya Rudolph told Entertainment Weekly. “It all sort of bled together.”
Melissa McCarthy agreed: “In the rehearsal process, you really got to know everyone’s characters before you’re shooting. Even if you didn’t use the specific information, you’d start to build this backstory.
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“We had this history as the characters. You’d get more and more comfortable with how [you were] going to play off of each other. I just remember thinking, ‘If this is what making movies is, this is mind-blowing’.”
Maya added that the director gave the cast “free rein to play”, so that by the time they started filming, they all knew each other’s creative processes.
“There was a stenographer who was typing everything that we were improvising. Then we’d come back, and there’d be new pages,” she recalled.
Rose Byrne learnt a new language for that hilarious toast scene
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Kristen Wiig’s Annie and Rose Byrne’s Helen come face-to-face for the first time at Maya Rudolph’s character Lillian’s engagement bash
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During those engagement party toasts, Paul Feig let Kristen and Rose improvise one-upping each other, with hilarious results.
“It went on forever. I just kept laughing. I remember thinking, “Oh, I’m going to have a hard time getting through this movie without ruining takes,” Melissa remembered.
Rose even pretended to speak Thai in one rehearsal, and the producers loved it so much that they made her learn a portion of Thai for real in the final cut.
Helen shares a home with a superhero
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Bridesmaids is set between Milwaukee and Chicago, but it was actually filmed in Los Angeles – and film and TV fans may recognise one of the sets from an iconic series.
The comedy was filmed in part at the same location used for the 1960s Batman TV series and film.
Helen’s lavish home, where Annie spectacularly flips out at the Parisian-themed bridal show, famously doubled as Wayne Manor in the retro show.
It’s also Eddie Murphy’s palatial home in Bowfinger and the estate of Kenneth Branagh’s conductor character in Dead Again.
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Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson actually became roommates after appearing as siblings in Bridesmaids
Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas played Kristen Wiig’s character’s hapless roommates in Bridesmaids
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Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson play Annie’s roommates in Bridesmaids, and reality ended up mirroring fiction for the funny duo.
“We played roommates so well in Bridesmaids, we thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it for real’,” Rebel explained on Conan O’Brien’s talk show in September 2012. “Except instead of annoying Kristen Wiig, we’re now annoying all the neighbours nearby.”
After the film came out, fans suspected they were siblings, or married, because their chemistry was so effortless.
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“When we met it was like complete synchronicity,” Matt told the BBC in September 2015. “We’re both very laid back and we’re also quite driven professionally and I see that in her and she sees that in me but we’re not competitive because we just enjoy each other’s work.”
The pair lived together in Los Angeles for three years, until Rebel moved out after making the “decision to become a huge movie star and buy a house”.
The film’s co-writer Annie Mumolo originally wanted to play a main role in Bridesmaids, but it didn’t work out in the end
The lengthy wait for the movie to get made meant that co-writer Annie Mumolo couldn’t RSVP for her role as a bridesmaid.
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By the time the movie started filming, Annie was seven months pregnant, and her character was redeveloped for a new actor.
“I was like, I’m living my life and I was having a family,” she told The New York Times in 2021. “So, I got pregnant. [The film] had gotten sort of shelved, and then they called like two weeks later and said, ‘We’re back on!’ And it was like, ‘I’m pregnant. So that’s going to be great’.”
Annie eventually gave birth to her son a week and a half after filming wrapped on Bridesmaids.
Although Annie couldn’t take centre stage in the film, she does appear in the infamous plane scene, playing the woman sitting next to Annie on that turbulent flight to Las Vegas.
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Bridesmaids writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo also got to share a scene in the movie
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That flight scene was actually created as a substitute for another chaotic scene that was axed so Bridesmaids wouldn’t be compared to The Hangover
What happens in Vegas stays on the cutting room floor with Bridesmaids.
The release of 2009’s The Hangover forced the team to scrap a messy Sin City bachelorette party adventure that featured in Bridesmaids’ original script.
“We did not want to be compared to The Hangover,” Paul told Insider in 2021. “We did not want to hear, ’This is the female Hangover. That was our kryptonite.”
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He later told Glamour: ”[The Hangover] was so big and successful and had done Vegas so well that we were kind of like, ‘Why would we do it again?’. I said, ‘They should just not get to Vegas. It should all fall apart on the plane’.”
This Vegas sequence would have included a visit to a male strip club, where Annie would have been pulled up on stage by a dancer dressed as a cowboy.
There was also a scene where the bridal party went to a male strip club and Annie gets pulled on stage by a cowboy stripper.
Recalling what the scene entailed, Paul told Business Insider: “He has her lie down on the dance floor and dances over the top of her, but ball sweat drips into her open mouth as she’s screaming.”
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The Bridesmaids cast pictured ahead of the characters’ ill-fated flight to Las Vegas
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Jon Hamm is uncredited for his work in Bridesmaids
Jon Hamm plays Ted, Annie’s selfish love interest, in Bridesmaids – a role that was both uncredited and mostly improvised.
The Mad Men star’s lack of poster credit was his own request because, at the time, he was better known for his dramatic work, and he worried that his name being attached to the project would mislead audiences into thinking Bridesmaids was not actually a comedy.
He appeared in the film as a favour to Kristen Wiig, with whom he became friends after guest hosting an episode of SNL.
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“I did that movie before there was a part, before there was a script, I said ‘yes’ to it. And [my] agents went, ‘Oh, well, shit. How do we, you know, ask for money?’,” Jon said on SiriusXM in 2022. “And I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. Just let me let go and have fun with friends’.”
Jon’s most famous moment in Bridesmaids – his sex scene with Kristen – was approached more like a fight sequence than a love scene
Jon Hamm in Bridesmaids
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Paul Feig told Glamour that he thought it would be funnier to make the scene look less like romance, and more like “a professional wrestling scene”.
“It was like this big action scene,” he explained. “There’s nothing sexy about that scene at all, and that’s what made it so fun.”
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A minor Bridesmaids storyline featuring Paul Rudd was left on the cutting room floor
Ant-Man actor Paul Rudd was originally supposed to appear in a scene with Annie, where his and Kristen’s characters go on an ice-skating blind date together.
The date, of course, goes horribly wrong, with Paul’s character falling to the ground and yelling expletives at children.
Paul Feig told Entertainment Weekly that the scene was “one of the funniest things I’ve ever been a witness to,” and was written to highlight Annie’s bad luck with guys. Unfortunately, this moment is cut from the final edit, but the seven-minute sequence was included on the DVD extras, and has since made its way to YouTube.
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Bridesmaids nearly featured another famous cameo – from Matt Damon
Paul Rudd wasn’t the only A-lister who was robbed of an appearance in Bridesmaids. Speaking to Business Insider, Paul Feig revealed in 2021 that Matt Damon was supposed to play himself in a fantasy cameo.
Describing the scene, the director said: “Annie goes in the dressing room to try on this really expensive dress, and suddenly she has a fantasy of what her life could be in this dress.
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“It’s this romance feel with her running through the woods and Matt Damon is shirtless chopping wood.”
This romantic fantasy sequence was totally scrapped from the film by Paul and producer Judd Apatow, because “there needed to be a consequence to Annie’s actions”, and she also needed “to be humiliated in front of Helen and the other bridesmaids”.
“So,” he added. “We came up with the food poisoning from being at a shitty restaurant.”
Certain jokes were edited out of Bridesmaids following the death of Jill Clayburgh
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Jill Clayburgh and Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids
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Bridesmaids, sadly, was Jill Clayburgh’s last performance before her death.
Jill died between filming and the film’s release, which affected some of the jokes that made it into the final cut.
“We took some dirty Jill Clayburgh jokes out because I just thought, ‘that can’t be the last thing she says’,” Judd Apatow told The Playlist, admitting that even if the quips were still “funny” they could be perceived as “questionable”.
Some of these raunchier gags did make the DVD outtake reel, though.
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Paul Feig recalled telling the late performer: “I can’t believe we’re making you say this.”
Her response? “Oh I love it.”
“She was so sincerely happy to be doing this kind of comedy that it’s a special memory for me,” he added.
Chris O’Dowd’s Bridesmaids character wasn’t written as Irish in the script
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Chris O’Dowd told HuffPost in 2013 that he originally auditioned for Bridesmaids with an American accent – but Paul Feig suggested he try it in his own.
“Paul Feig is a huge Anglophile and knew [The IT Crowd] really well and was a big fan of it,” Chris explained. “He said, ‘Hey, why don’t you try it in your own accent?’. And it just kind of went well and we improvised for a good while like that with Kristen – yeah, and it played well.”
Chris O’Dowd played Rhodes, Kristen Wiig’s on-screen love interest, in Bridesmaids
Judd Apatow also approved of having an Irish love interest, believing it would make the love story a little less formulaic and, in Chris’ words, “odd”.
Kristen Wiig is actually not a fan of the infamous food poisoning sequence
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast in 2017, Kristen admitted that all the gross-out humour was added into her script by Judd Apatow.
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“When people say, ‘Oh, we’re gonna give more female-centered movies a chance,’ you’re not reading the fine print, which is, ‘Oh, but, they have to be like this’,” she claimed. “They want to see women acting like guys.
“The scene was not our idea and it was not in the original script and we didn’t love it. It was strongly suggested for us to put that in there. I didn’t want to see people shitting and puking.”
Apparently, all that fake vomit tasted better than it looked
Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy and Wendi McLendon-Covey in Bridesmaids
Another of the most memorable scenes in Bridesmaids is the moment when the women get food poisoning while trying on wedding outfits.
It looked gross, but Paul Feig told Glamour that the “concoction” that made up the faux vomit actually consisted of oatmeal (“for a little bit of texture”), “some chopped up vegetables” and almond milk”.
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That food poisoning scene might feel extreme – but it originally went even further
Paul added that he and the crew made use of a “vomit cannon” at one point.
“There’s a scene that we didn’t put in the movie where Ellie’s character runs in, and Wendi’s like, ‘Get away from me’,” he noted.
“And so she runs down the hall and opens the door and projectile vomits across the room. But when we got in the editing room everyone was immediately like, ‘That’s just too much, we have to take that out.’ We do have some class.”
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Kristen Wiig had no idea how big Bridesmaids would go on to become
Paul Feig and Kristen Wiig on the set of Bridesmaids
Suzanne Hanover/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock
Kristen Wiig admitted recently that she was fairly sure the film would be a box-office failure.
“I remember after opening weekend, they were like, ‘Well, we tried,’” she said on a 2025 episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast.
“We just thought, like, that was it. And then I think just more and more people kept seeing it and then it kind of happened later.”
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Paul Feig also admitted on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast that he felt pressure for the film to succeed, even though it was “predicted to not do well right up until the day of release”.
And no, there’s definitely not going to be a Bridesmaids sequel
Bridesmaids has gone on to become a comedy classic – but we definitely wouldn’t hold out hope for a sequel
Suzanne Hanover/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock
As the case with almost all hit films, people have been desperate for a sequel. Although many key players – including Paul Feig – are open to the idea, Kristen Wiig has explicitly said she has no interest in revisiting Annie and her friends.
During a 2021 appearance on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show, she explained, “I just don’t want it to be translated as a negative thing, because we obviously love the movie [but] we feel like we told that story and we were just so excited to do other things.”
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Bridesmaids is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
For the first Peaky Blinders movie, The Immortal Man, Netflix went suitably large for Cillian Murphy’s first feature-length outing as Tommy Shelby.
The big-budget movie, which picks up the story in the Birmingham Blitz of World War Two, seems to have paid off, with the film picking up an increasingly rare box office success as well as critical acclaim.
After a short run in cinemas, the film has landed on Netflix, with new legions of fans streaming the next chapter.
With six seasons and a film now part of the Peaky Blinders’ legacy, you might be wondering where that leaves the franchise and what’s next for the gang (if anything).
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Here’s a quick guide to everything we know so far…
Will there be another Peaky Blinders film after The Immortal Man?
So far, there’s been no confirmation of a The Immortal Man sequel, or indeed another film set in the Peaky Blinders universe.
Back in 2021 show creator Steven Knight told Deadline the “plan from the beginning” had been to “end Peaky with a movie”.
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Based on how the movie ended, fans can probably agree it’s the last we’ll see of Tommy Shelby – so it would be a surprise if we did see another Peaky Blinders film, at least for the time being.
Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy in the Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man
What about a new series of Peaky Blinders in the future?
What will the new Peaky Blinders sequel series be about?
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Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man acts as a bridge between the initial six series of the show and the new ones.
The sequel series will jump further forward in time and take place after the events of the film, picking the story up in the 1950s.
An official synopsis for the follow-up reads: “Britain, 1953. After being heavily bombed in World War II, Birmingham is building a better future out of concrete and steel.
“In a new era of Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders, the race to own Birmingham’s massive reconstruction project becomes a brutal contest of mythical dimensions. This is a city of unprecedented opportunity and danger, with the Shelby family right at its blood-soaked heart.”
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Meanwhile Knight has promised new characters and adventures, teasing: “The new generation of Shelbys have taken the wheel, and it will be a hell of a ride.”
When can we see the new episodes of Peaky Blinders?
Netflix hasn’t confirmed a release date yet, however we might not have to wait too long according to What’s On Netflix.
The online outlet has reported that filming began in Stoke-on-Trent in early March 2026, suggesting a possible mid-to-late 2027 release date.
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Barry Keoghan’s character becomes leader of a new generation of Peaky Blinders in The Immortal Man
Who will star in the new Peaky Blinders seasons?
So far, Netflix and the BBC haven’t officially announced any cast members.
We do know that Cillian Murphy is on board as a producer, so perhaps we could see Tommy Shelby in some flashback scenes.
Reports have suggested that it could be a cast of relative newcomers, with Video Nasty starCal O’Driscoll spotted on set along with How To Get To Heaven From Belfast star Fintan Shevlin and Atomic actor Jacob Wright.
The first six seasons of Peaky Blinders are now streaming on BBC iPlayer, with the film The Immortal Man available to watch on Netflix.
President Donald Trump gave a predictably heartless response to the death of former FBI director and special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who died on Saturday aged 81.
“Robert Mueller just died,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Mueller served as special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and became a target for Trump and his MAGA base. His family announced last August that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2021.
While Mueller’s investigation uncovered contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election, Mueller declined to charge Trump with obstruction, saying that while he had sufficient evidence to charge Trump, he was prohibited because Trump was the sitting president at the time.
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Despite this, Trump spentyearsattacking Mueller for an investigation that ultimately let him off the hook.
Less than an hour after expressing glee at the death of Mueller, Trump was back to his usual attacks on Truth Social.
“The Fascist Democrats will never protect America, but the Republicans will,” Trump said in a post threatening to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to patrol airports across the US.
Democratic lawmakers and pundits are unleashing on President Donald Trump for his social media post celebrating the death of Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel who oversaw the 2016 investigation into Russian election interference, calling it “disgusting” and “insane.”
A cause of death has not yet been disclosed, though two people familiar with the situation told MS NOW that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
The post drew fiery responses from legions of Democratic politicians and media personalities, who decried its callousness and mourned Trump’s ongoing indifference to the presidential decorum of the past.
“I expect every Republican who was outraged at people for celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death to immediately condemn Trump for saying, ‘I’m glad he’s dead’ about Robert Mueller,” wrote liberal political influencer Harry Sisson on X. “This is disgusting.”
Many Trump supporters are defending him, however, arguing that Mueller spread “the most destructive lies of the 21st Century” and was “a piece of garbage” for his so-called “persecution” of Trump. Other conservatives condemned the post.
Mueller, seen here testifying in 2019 on his report on Russian election interference.
Susan Walsh/Associated Press
Democratic Representative Dan Goldman called Mueller “a true public servant” in his social media tribute, writing: “Yet the President of the United States disgustingly celebrates Mueller’s death simply because he exposed Trump’s efforts to steal the 2016 election.”
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan argued that far too many journalists are reporting on Trump’s post without any detraction, writing, “Very few acknowledgments of how insane and inappropriate it is for the president to respond like this.”
He added, “Imagine their response if it was [former President Joe] Biden.”
Below are more responses to Trump’s Mueller post:
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What’s telling here, of course, is that Trump has always insisted Mueller CLEARED him
Trump’s psychotic reaction here suggests: even TRUMP knows Mueller DID NOT clear him pic.twitter.com/K2FAV3FdCp
In an era when many young men—including President Trump—were trying to avoid serving in Vietnam, Mueller not only volunteered for the Marines after graduating from Princeton—he spent a year waiting for an injured knee to heal so he could serve. I have always found that be the… https://t.co/eEzjpP56Kr
The cruelty is the point. Trump’s goal is to distract you from rising gas prices, his aimless war, ICE abuses, and the Epstein files. Don’t give him what he wants.
And may Robert Mueller, a US Marine and lifelong public servant, rest in peace. https://t.co/C51NTOt2rq
Afroman has won his legal battle after Ohio police attempted to sue him for defamation.
In 2022, Ohio police broke down Afroman’s door as part of a drug and kidnapping investigation. The raid did not lead to any charges.
Hilariously, he then released an album in 2023, titled Lemon Pound Cake. It was a piss-take of the CCTV footage captured from his house during the raid.
The deputies lawsuit came right after and requested $3.9m (£2.9m) damages for:
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humiliation, ridicule, mental distress, embarrassment and loss of reputation.
However, the officers stole money, broke down his door, and trashed his house. It should have been Afroman suing them.
Afroman — because he got high
One song took aim at an officer who stopped mid raid to eye up a lemon pound cake on his kitchen counter. The song says the officer:
got the munchies because he got high.
Another was titled “Will you help me repair my door”, and needs no explanation. So far, it has over 11 million views.
During the trial, the Afroman said:
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he had a constitutional right to make artistic and critical content about government officials.
His lawyer added that public officials:
could not use the courts to silence criticism simply because it hurt their feelings.
His lawyer also asked if any reasonable person would think a man wearing a flag suit in court “should be taken seriously”.
If you haven’t been following this, Afroman’s lawyers have also had some incredible moments — including asking if any reasonable person would think that a man wearing a flag suit in court should be taken seriously https://t.co/fb9R7EOja6
Randy Walters son of a bitch /That’s why I f–ked his wife and got filthy rich
But in court, Randy Walters testified that he “wasn’t sure” if his wife was fucking afroman.
Having a cop testify under oath that he isn’t sure if his wife is fucking Afroman is a level of fucking with the police previously unknown. https://t.co/8WM6kbHfSv
DES MOINES — Rob Sand got a hero’s welcome at a state deer hunting expo at the Iowa Events Center on a recent March weekend.
The state’s lone Democratic statewide elected official, and Democrats’ hope for flipping the governor’s mansion for the first time in 16 years, could barely make it through the Sunday morning sea of camo-wearing, venison jerky-chomping, Busch Light tallboy-nursing fellow hunters as more than a dozen people stopped and congratulated him.
But it wasn’t because of his politics. If anything, it was in spite of them.
“Rob, heckuva buck!” said one passerby.
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Sand was at the annual Iowa Deer Classic to enter a Green gross-scoring 209-inch buck he’d tagged earlier this season. Photos of the deer have proliferated on Trophy Bucks of Iowa and other Facebook hunting groups across the state.
“Mr. 200!” said Levi Schmitz, a Trump-voting Republican who nonetheless plans to back Sand.
“You got me,” the 43-year-old state auditor responded with a grin.
As Democrats across the map continue to hunt for paths out of the metaphorical wilderness, Sand is betting that his own path to the governor’s mansion runs through his familiarity in the literal wilderness.
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Sand represents the kind of candidate Democrats have long sought to win on tough red terrain: an inarguably of-the-place contender whose persona and bio can help sell political views that have become a tough pitch in places where many hear “Democrat” and picture coastal elites. Iowa, a swing state through 2012, moved hard right in the Trump years as Democrats increasingly struggled to connect.
Here, Republicans have taken advantage of the culture wars in a big way for years. Retiring Sen. Joni Ernst first won in 2014 by running hard on her pig-farming, military vet bio and painting her attorney opponent as an effete outsider.
Sand doesn’t run from some of his more liberal views. But like many other Democrats running this year, he’s banking that his local cultural cred will make him tougher for Republicans to caricature as a not-like-us coastal outsider.The day the expo kicked off, the avid bow hunter and fisherman’s campaign launched a “Hunting With Rob” microsite that extolls the rugged Iowa way of life. “For the first time in Iowa history, hunters, sportsmen, conservationists, and outdoor enthusiasts alike will finally have an ally in the governor’s office,” it reads.
In a state where the first day of deer season is an unofficial holiday, Sand’s strategy to center his culturally midwestern hobby rather than his Democratic brand was on full display. He dropped $30 on a glove for removing burrs, $35 on a tool that keeps hunting bows level and $69 on MAXX Step Aiders for climbing trees. And the branding appeared to be working.
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“I’m super-Republican, but you got my vote,” said Tom Buckroyd, a hunter from a small community near Marshalltown wearing a “Crossbows Are Gay” T-shirt who spent roughly 20 minutes talking to Sand about hunting.
As he picked at a free sample of barbecue venison jerky on a toothpick, Sand said he wasn’t surprised by his warm reception.
“Number one, it just means I shot a huge buck this year,” he told POLITICO. “But number two, I go back to culture. And we have this stupid, broken, two-choice political system. … And we are told stories about who can be right in either party. And when you find someone that’s in a party, but then also doesn’t fit that story, I think for a lot of people that is a sign of realness or a sign of authenticity about who they are.”
Since their bruising losses in 2024, Democrats have tried all manner of ways to rehabilitate their brand, from cursing more to growing beards to talking about sports. This cycle, they’ve redoubled their efforts to find authentically local candidates — and in some races, those candidates have emerged and caught lightning as they challenge status-quo Democratic candidates. Many are leaning hard into local culture signals.
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Sand has hunting. Maine’s Senate candidate Graham Platner has his oystering and his Second Amendment creds. Texas’ Bobby Pulido has his guitar; James Talarico has the Good Book. Alaska’s Mary Peltola has fish. Democratic candidates who can win in tough places often get national buzz. And Sand happens to be from a state that — at least for now — still plays an outsized role in the presidential process. Could Sand be a surprise 2028 contender?
“If Rob wins, he will instantly be part of that conversation,” said Tommy Vietor, President Barack Obama’s former Iowa press secretary and a host of Pod Save America.
Sand is running as a hunting-loving, churchgoing, Casey’s gas station pizza-loving state auditor who has spent the past five years positioning himself as a fiscally responsible friend to the Iowa taxpayer.
There’s been little public polling of the race; the only public survey, released back in October, found Sand beating GOP Rep. Randy Feenstra by two points, 45 percent to 43 percent. But national operatives in both parties see it as one of a handful of governor’s races that could flip. Sand is unopposed in the state’s June 2 primary, though five Republicans will be on the ballot for their party’s nomination.
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He entered the show room at the EMC Expo Center after attending a chapel service for expo-goers where he quietly scrolled a Contemporary English Version of the Bible on his phone, listening dutifully to the sermon about Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000. “What sort of kingdom work is He asking you to do?” the pastor asked
And what does Sand see as his kingdom work? “Talking about the evils of the two-choice system and trying to break down a system that inherently divides us and leads our leaders into the temptation of being lazy, and leads our leaders into the temptation of lying, bearing false witness against their opponents, because they know that they don’t actually have to solve our problems,” he said.
“In order to get reelected, all they got to do is convince us that they’re the lesser of two evils,” Sand continued. “And they win because we only have two realistic options on the ballot — and that entire system, to me, is just such a temptation to not serve people, to not do good, to actively lie, to spread false information.”
You’d be forgiven if you forgot Sand was running as a Democrat. That, of course, is part of the point of his campaign. Sometimes to salvage the Democratic brand in a red state you have to first savage it.
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But Republicans will be sure to remind voters a few times between now and November.
“He hasn’t really had to take very many positions,” said David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican operative who has guided multiple presidential campaigns. ”He’s going to be forced at some point to either disavow the Democratic Party platform, which is going to piss off progressives, or he’s going to have to accept the label of being a Democrat in Iowa and defend it. And it’s gonna be hard for him to do.”
Republicans will paint some images of Sand of their own. As much as he would like to cut the figure of a rugged outdoorsman, they say, he also spent some time in college modeling in Milan and Paris — photos that may well pop up in GOP ads. “I mean, it was a part-time job I had in college,” Sand said. “Catching chickens was my first one.” Catching chickens? “Castrated male chickens,” he clarifies.
There is also the matter of his election financing: His wealthy in-laws have dumped $7 million into his campaign. “Hardworking Iowans know the value of a dollar, and don’t have the luxury of having a silver spoon feeding them their career,” Iowa Republican Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement.
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Iowa Republicans are taking Sand’s candidacy seriously. In an interview, Bob Vander Plaats, the influential West Des Moines evangelical leader, called Sand “dangerous” and the “best candidate” Democrats could run.
“He’s trying to come off as a more folksy, more accomplished Tim Walz. ‘I go to church every Sunday. I hunt. I’m the taxpayers’ watchdog. I’m gonna hit all the Republican talking points, basically, that I can,’” Vander Plaats said before stressing that Sand “would be way outside of where Iowans are.”
On the Republican side, Vander Plaats endorsed Adam Steen over Rep. Randy Feenstra, the GOP establishment pick and primary frontrunner. “I just haven’t been impressed with Randy’s campaign. I don’t think he has the campaign to win a general election.”
Sand practices a judge-not-lest-ye-be-judge approach with would-be voters. When he was speaking to the man wearing a “Crossbows Are Gay” shirt, Sand didn’t bat an eye.
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“I know what that shirt says, but I’m not going to assume that he literally is anti-homosexual because his T-shirt says that,” Sand said. “I’m not a believer that lecturing people is an effective way to get them to not do a thing. Now, I’m open about my support for gay marriage, for the gay community. He’s probably seen me say that. … And he’s not going to hear me back away from that. So to me, there’s probably room for someone to wear a shirt that they mean as a joke they don’t actually mean to be negative.”
Sand didn’t win the Big Buck contest he’d entered. But as he took selfies with the men who had beat him, an onlooker from Exira named Jeremy brought up a possible consolation prize.
“You’re the next governor of Iowa!” he told Sand.
As the day wrapped, the lanky state auditor pulled his buck head down off the wall and, carrying it by an antler, walked out of the convention center — its taxidermied eyes fixed in a frozen stare at Sand’s potential new voters.
In true Western colonial fashion, Czech authorities are investigating it as a “possible terrorist attack” after the group claimed responsibility and linked it to the war in Gaza.
Because anyone standing up against Genocide and murdering innocent people is a terrorist, whilst the global superpowers dropping the bombs are completely innocent?
Cue the worldwide proscription of Earthquake Faction in 3, 2, 1…
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Czech govt is already calling this a terror attack.
Not a single person was hurt nor did the group aim to hurt people. Their stated goal was to “quash their means to kill”. To save lives not take them.
Following the UK govt’s lead. Welcome to the era of nonviolent terrorism. https://t.co/8L9NF6iqSE
But this is the ridiculous example that the British government has set. Vandalise equipment used to murder innocent brown people, and you’re on a terrorist watch list.
Elbit Systems Ltd. is an Israeli defense company engaged in the development and production of weapons and combat systems for land, air and sea combat forces, in the fields of electronics, electro-optics, artillery, aviation, lasers and more.
The company is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer and has a tightly knit relationship with the Israeli security apparatus for which it provides a wide range of services and develops extensive weapon technology, equipment and platforms deployed in varying fields.
As the Canary previously reported, Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, which markets its products as “battle-tested” on the Palestinian people. They provide 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment, as well as bullets, missiles, and digital warfare.
Elbit’s Israel-based CEO, Bezhalel Machlis, who also sits on the board of Elbit Systems UK, explained how the company has “ramped up production” to meet the demand of the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and across the wider region.
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The International Court of Justice has ruled it’s plausible Israel is committing genocide – and Elbit is arming that genocide.
Elbit Switzerland
Activists have also vandalised the offices of Elbit Systems in Bern, Switzerland.
Sent in to me for publishing:
“At 8pm local time on March 20 the Elbit Systems Switzerland office in Bern, Switzerland has been vandalized.
How does Elbit feel now that one of its factories resembles Gaza? Your own medicine doesn’t taste so nice, does it?
Does international law exist, or does it not? Because when the war crimes being livestreamed on phones are completely unchallenged, it seems that maybe it doesn’t.
Elected officials stand and watch while their pals carpet bomb innocent people. Yet they cry “terrorist” when people take direct action, and it messes up their other pals’ profits.
Ordinary people should be allowed to resist the genocide that their governments are actively involved in. Because let’s face it, the majority of our governments will not. If we’re not allowed to resist genocide, then what the fuck can we do?
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And as Stokely Carmichael said:
In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.
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