كاي هافيرتس

كاي هافيرتز (بالألمانية: Kai Havertz؛ مواليد 16 يونيو 1999) هو لاعب كرة قدم ألماني يلعب في مركز وسط مع نادي باير ليفركوزن في الدوري الألماني الدرجة الأولى ومنتخب ألمانيا لكرة القدم .

مسيرته الكروية
بدايته المبكرة
ولد في مدينة آخن في ألمانيا، وتلقى هافيرتس أول تجربة له في مجال كرة القدم مع فريق الهواة ألمانية ماريادورف. في عام 2008، تم التوقيع معه من قبل فريق دوري الدرجة الثانية ألمانيا آخن حيث قضى عامين في أكاديمية النادي قبل انضمامه إلى باير ليفركوزن في سن الحادية عشرة. في عام 2016، بعد تسجيله 18 هدفًا مع فريق النادي تحت 17 سنة، حصل على ميدالية فريتز والتر الفضية تحت 17 سنة قبل أن يقتحم فريق ليفركوزن الأول في العام التالي.

باير ليفركوزن
شارك هافيرتس لأول مرة مع باير ليفركوزن في 15 أكتوبر 2016، حيث دخل كبديل في الشوط الثاني عن تشارلز أرانغويز في مباراة الخسارة 2–1 في الدوري أمام فيردر بريمن. عند دخوله الميدان، أصبح أصغر لاعب يشارك في الدوري الألماني بسن 17 و126 يومًا.

مسيرته الدولية
في 29 أغسطس 2018، تم استدعاء هافيرتس إلى المنتخب الألماني الأول للمرة الأولى من قبل المدير الفني يواخيم لوف. كان ضمن تشكيلة ألمانيا المشاركة بالمجموعات في دوري الأمم الأوروبية 2018–19 أمام فرنسا وفي المباراة الودية أمام بيرو. شارك لأول مرة في 9 سبتمبر 2018، حيث دخل كبديل في الدقيقة 88 عن تيمو فيرنر ضد بيرو، حيث انتهت المباراة بالفوز على أرضه 2–1. عند ظهوره لأول مرة، أصبح أول لاعب ولد في عام 1999 يُمثّل المنتخب الوطني

Kai Havertz

Kai Havertz (born 11 June 1999) is a German professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen and the German national team.

Upon making his debut for Leverkusen in 2016, Havertz became the club's youngest ever debutant in the Bundesliga and he became their youngest ever goalscorer when he scored his first goal the following year. He is also the youngest player to reach the milestones of 50 and 100 league appearances in the German top-flight.
Club Career
Youth career
Born in Aachen, Germany, Havertz received his first experience in football with amateur side Alemannia Mariadorf. In 2008, he was signed by second division side Alemannia Aachen where he spent two years in the club's academy before joining Bayer Leverkusen at the age of 11.[2] In 2016, after scoring 18 goals for the club's U-17 side, he was awarded the silver U-17 Fritz Walter Medal before breaking into Leverkusen's senior side the following year.[3][4]

Bayer Leverkusen
Havertz made his debut for Bayer Leverkusen on 15 October 2016, coming on as a second-half substitute for Charles Aránguiz in a 2–1 Bundesliga loss to Werder Bremen. Upon entering the field of play, he became the club's youngest ever Bundesliga debutante at the age of 17 years and 126 days.[2][5] On 17 February 2017, he assisted teammate Karim Bellarabi to score the 50 000th Bundesliga goal.[6] Four days later, following the suspension of teammate Hakan Çalhanoğlu, he was handed his first Champions League start in the first leg of a round of 16 loss to Atlético Madrid.[7][8] He was ruled out of the return leg of the fixture in March, however, as the match clashed with the examinations period at his school.[9] He scored his first goal for the club on 2 April, netting a later equalizer in a 3–3 draw with VfL Wolfsburg.[10] Upon doing so, Havertz broke another club record to become Leverkusen's youngest-ever goalscorer in the Bundesliga at the age of 17.[11] He ultimately made 28 appearances across all competitions and scored four goals, including a brace against Hertha BSC on the final day of the season, as Leverkusen ended the campaign in 12th position.[12]

On 14 April 2018, Havertz became the youngest player in the history of the Bundesliga to reach 50 appearances at 18 years and 307 days old, breaking the record previously held by Timo Werner.[13][14] He went on to end his second full campaign with the club with 30 league appearances and three goals to his name as Leverkusen ended the season in fifth place.[15]

Havertz continued to impress during the following season, despite Leverkusen initially struggling in the league, and by the mid-way point of the campaign was the only player to have started every match for the club, scoring six goals along the way.[16] On 26 January 2019, he became Leverkusen's youngest-ever penalty scorer when he scored from the spot in a 3–0 league win over Wolfsburg, aged 19 years, seven months and 16 days.[17] The following month, he became the second youngest-ever player to achieve 75 Bundesliga appearances, behind Julian Draxler, when he started and scored in a 2–0 win over Fortuna Düsseldorf.[18] On 13 April, he scored on his 100th appearance for Leverkusen to help the club to a 1–0 league win over Stuttgart. The goal, his 13th for the campaign, also saw him become the youngest player since Stuttgart's own Horst Köppel in 1967–68 to score 13 goals in a single league season.[19] On 5 May, he scored his 15th goal of the campaign during a 6–1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt; a match which for the first time ever saw seven goals scored in the first half of a Bundesliga match.[20] On the final day of the season, he became the highest scoring teenager in a single Bundesliga campaign when he scored his 17th goal during a 5–1 win over Hertha BSC.[21] At the end of the season, he was named runner-up to Marco Reus for the German Footballer of the Year award, losing out by just 37 votes.[22]

On the opening day of the 2019–20 campaign, Havertz scored in Leverkusen's 3–2 win over Paderborn, becoming the second-youngest player of all-time behind Köppel to score 25 Bundesliga goals.[23] In December, at the age of 20 years, six months and four days, he broke another of Werner's record to become the youngest-ever player to reach 100 Bundesliga appearances when he started in his side's 2–0 defeat to Koln.[24]

International career
Youth
Havertz made his debut for the Germany national under-16 team on 11 November 2014, starting in the friendly match against the Czech Republic before being substituted out in the 57th minute for Tom Baack. The match finished as a 3–1 win for Germany.[25]

Havertz was included in Germany's squad for the 2016 UEFA European Under-17 Championship in Azerbaijan.[26] He appeared in all five of Germany's matches, scoring once before Germany were eliminated by Spain in the semi-finals.

Following a 15-month absence from youth internationals, Havertz made his debut for Germany's under-19 team, debuting on 31 August 2017 in the 0–0 friendly draw against Switzerland, coming on in the 72nd minute for Palkó Dárdai.[27] On 4 October 2017, in his third appearance for the under-19 team, Havertz scored four goals in a 5–1 win against Belarus in the first round of European Under-19 Championship qualifying.[28] He was later named captain of the under-19 side.[29]

Senior
On 29 August 2018, Havertz was called up to Germany's senior team for the first time by head coach Joachim Löw. He was included in the squad for Germany's UEFA Nations League match against France and friendly against Peru.[29][30] Havertz made his international debut on 9 September 2018, coming on as a substitute in the 88th minute for Timo Werner against Peru, with the match finishing as a 2–1 home win for Germany.[31] Upon making his debut, he became the first player born in 1999 to represent the national team.[32]

Style of play
Havertz has been described as technically-gifted, two-footed midfielder who is comfortable with the ball on either foot and adept with his head.[33] During his formative years, his style of play drew early comparisons to compatriot Mesut Özil, with Havertz himself admitting the Arsenal midfielder was a player he looked up to.[34] By the age of 19, and following numerous impressive performances in the Bundesliga, further comparisons had been drawn between Havertz and former Leverkusen players such as Michael Ballack, Toni Kroos and Arturo Vidal, and German media began describing him as a combination of the lot and an Alleskönner – a player who can do everything.

ديفيد أتينبارا

ديفيد آتينبارا (بالإنجليزية البريطانية: David Attenborough) (حسب نطق الاسم الأصلي) هوَ صانع وثائقيات ومُذيع تلفيزيونيّ وكاتب وبيئي بريطاني من لندن. نشأ ديفيد في إنكلترا وبدأ عمله كمُحرر لكتب الأطفال العلمية، ثم حاولَ لاحقاً الإلتحاق بهيئة الإذاعة البريطانية، التي تمكن من العمل عندها كمُنتج أفلام وثائقية. وظلَّ يَترقى بعدها حتى حصل على منصب موجه في قناة بي بي سي تو، وبعدَ ذلك عملَ على عدد من الإنتاجات الوثائقية، حتى أصدر أخيراً في عام 1979 وثائقيَّ الحياة على الأرض الذي افتتح به سلسلة الحياة الشهيرة والتي كانت قفزة نوعية في تاريخ إنتاجاته الوثائقية.

أنتج وقدم ديفيد خلال العُقود التسعة التي عاشها عشرات الوثائقيات المُختلفة، وكانت أبرزها هيَ سلسلة الحياة ذات الأجزاء التسعة، التي بدأها بُثلاثية من ثلاث بَرامج تتحدث بشكل عام عن خواص الحيوانات الأحيائية، ثم أصدر 6 أجزاء أخرى أكثر تخصصاً تتحدث عن مجموعات وبيئات مُحددة للحيوانات خصوصاً الفقاريات. كان آخر إنتاج لديفيد هوَ وثائقيُّ مدغشقر، ويَعمل حالياً على وثائقي جديد عن الاحتباس الحراري بعُنوان الكوكب المُتجمد.
الحياة المُبكرة والعائلة
نمى ديفيد في غرفة داخلية ضمن حرم جامعة ليستر، فقد كان وَالده "فريدريك آتينبارا" مدير الجَامعة. وكان ديفيد هو الابن الأوسط من بين أبناء فريدريك الثلاثة (والاثنان الآخران هُما ريتشارد آتينبارا - أخوه الأكبر - الذي أصبحَ مُخرج أفلام وجون مايكل آتينبارا - أخوه الأصغر - الذي أصبح مُديراً في نادي ألفا روميو.

قضى ديفيد طفولته في جمعِ الأحافير والحجارة والعينات الأخرى من الطبيعة. وقد تَلقى تشجيعاً على القيام بهذه الأعمال عندما كان في السَّابعة، حيثُ أعجبت بعيناته العالمة الآثارية "جاكويتا هووْكس". وبَعدَ ذلك ببضع سنوات، أعطته وَاحدة من أختيه بالتبني حجر كهرمان مليئاً بأحافير لكائنات صغيرة قبل تاريخية، وبعدَ هذه الحادثة بـ50 عاماً أصبح ذاك الحجر هوَ موضوع وثائقيِّ ديفيد آلة زمن الكهرمان.

تعلم ديفيد في "مدرسة نحو ويغستون للبنين" في ليستر، ثم حاز منحة دراسية لتلقي التعليم في كلية كلير، كامبريدج عام 1945، وهناك درسَ علم الحيوان والجيولوجيا وحصلَ على درجة في العُلوم الطبيعية. وقد أصبحَ ابنه "روبرت آتينبارا" مُحاضراً عالي الشأن في علم الإنسان الحيوي في "مدرسة علمي الآثار والإنسانية" التابعة لجامعة أستراليا الوطنية في كانبرا.

العمل العلمي والإذاعيّ
العمل المُبكر في هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية

غلاف برنامج بحث حديقة الحيوان، وهوَ أول إنتاج كبير يُشارك فيه ديفيد آتينبارا.
بعد أن ترك ديفيد البحرية البريطانية أصبح يَعمل في تحرير كُتب الأطفال العلمية لصالح دار نشر. لكن سُرعان ما بدأ يُحس بخيبة الأمل والإحباط من طبعية عمله، ولذا ففي عام 1950 قدم طلباً للالتحاق بوَظيفة مُنتج برامج راديوية عند هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية. ومع أن طلبهُ هذا رُفض، فقد لفتت سيرته الذاتية لاحقاً انتباه "ماري آدمز" التي كانت آنذاك رئيسة قسم الإذاعات (الإذاعة الحية) في إدارة تلفاز هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية حديثة الإنشاء. وفي ذلك الوقت كان ديفيد - مثل مُعظم سكان بريطانيا من الطبقة العادية - لا يَمتلك تلفازاً، ولم يَكن قد شاهدَ سوى برنامج تلفزيونيّ وَأحد في حياته قبل ذلك. وبالرغم من ذلك فقد وَافق على عرض ماري بأخذ دورة تدريبية لمُدة 3 أشهر، وفي عام 1952 أصبحَ أخيراً مُوظفاً بدوام كامل عند هيئة الإذاعة. وقد ثُبط في البداية من الظهور على شاشة التلفاز بعد أن رأت ماري أن أسنانه كبيرة جداً، ولذا فقد أصبح مُنتجاً في قسم الإذاعات، والذي كانت جَميع إنتاجاته بَعيدة عن مجال الخيال العلمي. ومن مَشاريعه الأولى في ذلك الوَقت البرامج القصيرة "الحيوان" و"الخضار" و"المعدن؟" و"صائد الأغاني" (وهيَ سلسلة عن الموسيقى الفلكلورية أنتجها آلان لوماكس).

أما دربُ ديفيد مع برامج التاريخ الطبيعي فقد بدأ عندما أنتجَ وقدَّمَ سلسلة من ثلاثة أجزاء بعُنوان "سلوك الحيوانات". وقد عرَضَ البَرنامج - المُصور داخلياً في الاستوديو - حيوانات من حديقة لندن معَ عالم الطبيعة جوليان هوكسيلي وهوَ يُناقش استخدامها للتمويه والإشارات التحذيرية وعُروض المُغازلة خلال التزاوج. وقد التقى ديفيد أثناء هذا البرنامج "جاك ليستر" وهوً وصيّ بيت الزواحف في حديقة لندن، وقرَّرا أن يَصنعا معاً سلسلة من البَرامج عن بعثة لجَمع الحيوانات. وكان ما صَناعه هوَ برنامج "بحث حديقة الحيوان" الذي أذيع للمرة الأولى في عام 1954، وقد قدم ديفيد جزءاً منه لأن جاك كان مريضاً في ذلك الوَقت.

في عام 1957 كانت قد أُسست وحدة التاريخ الطبيعي في هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية في بريستول. ولذا فدُعيَ ديفيد للالتحاق بها، غير أنه رَفض لأنه لم يَشأ ترك عائلته المُتجذرة في لندن والإقامة وحده. وبدلاً من الانضمام إلى وحدة التاريخ الطبيعيِّ قرَّرَ أن يُنشأ قسمه الخاص، وهوَ "وحدة السفر والبعثات" التي أتاحت له إكمالَ عمله على برامج بحث حديقة الحيوان بالإضافة إلى وثائقيات أخرى منها "حكايا مُسافر" وسلسلة "مُغامرات".

في مطلع الستينيات استقال ديفيد من أعماله الدَّائمة معَ هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية لكيْ يُكمل دراساته العُليا في علم الإنسانية في كلية لندن للاقتصاد (واستفادَ لاحقاً من دراسته هذه بتصوير المَزيد من البَرامج العلمية). لكن بالرغم من ذلك، فقد قبل عرضاً من هيئة الإذاعة بعدَ ذلك بفترة للعَودة إليها والعَمل كمُوجه في قناة بي بي سي تو قبل أن يَتمكن من إنهاء دراسته.

الإدارة في هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية
أصبح ديفيد في شهر آذار/مارس عام 1965 مُوجهاً في قناة بي بي سي تو. ولاحقاً في العام نفسه صوَّرَ فلماً عن الفيلة في تنزانيا، ثم أعدَّ سلسلة من ثلاثة أجزاء عن تاريخ بالي الثقافي. وصور بعد ذلك فلم "فراغ في الخريطة" عام 1971، ولكي يُصورَ هذا الفلم فقد ذهَبَ في أول بعثة غربية تُرسل إلى وادٍ معزولٍ في غينيا الجديدة للبحث عن قبيلة غير مُتصلة بالعالم الخارجيّ.

بالرغم من أن بي بي سي تو أطلقت في عام 1964، فقد ظلَّت تُكافح حتى ذلك الوَقت لجذب اهتمام الناس. لكن عندما أصبح ديفيد مُوجهاً فيها بدأ يُغير من هذا سريعاً. فقد بدأ يُعد حقيبة من البرامج والوثائقيات كجُزء منَ المهمة التي أخذها على عاتقه لجعل إنتاجات بي بي سي تو مُتنوعة ومُختلفة عن إنتاجات القنوات الأخرى. فتضمن جدول بَرامجه الأسبوعيّ كل شيء من المُوسيقى والفنون والتسيلة والكوميديا إلى العلوم والآثار والتاريخ الطبيعي مُروراً بالسفر والدراما والرياضة والأعمال. وقد حصلت بَرامجُ ديفيد هذه على المَزيد من الاهتمام والأفضلية عندما أصبحت البي بي سي تو أول قناة بريطانية تُذاع بالألوان في عام 1967.

العودة إلى الإذاعة
بعد أن استقال ديفيد من عمله بالدوام الكامل مع هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية في عام 1972 للتفرغ لبرامجه بحُرية، أصبحَ مُذيعاً مُستقلاً وبدأ على الفور بالتجهيز لمَشاريعه الخاصة المُستقبلية. فقد رتب رحلة له إلى إندونيسيا مع طاقم من وَحدة التاريخ الطبيعي في هيئة الإذاعة، وصوَّر خلالها سلسلة "إلى الشرق مع آتينبارا" التي أذيعت في عام 1973، وقد كان أسلوبها مُشابهاً لسلسلة "بحث حديقة الحيوان" القديمة ولو أنها لم تتضمن نُقطة جمع الحيوانات.

وخلال عودته من تلك الرحلة، بدأ بالعمل على نُصوص بَرنامج الحياة على الأرض، الذي سيَكون في المُستقبل أول جزء من سلسلة الحياة الكبيرة. ولكن نظراً إلى مُستوى طموحه ببرنامج الجديد، فقد قررت هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية أن تتعاون مع قناة أمريكية لتأمين التمويل اللازم. وفي الأثناء التي كانت تُجري فيها القناتان التفاوضات معاً عملَ ديفيد على مجموعة أخرى من المَشاريع التلفزيونية، فقد قدَّمَ سلسلتي العين القبلية و"المُستكشفون" في عام 1975، وقدم أيضاً سلسلة أخرى للأطفال عن علم دراسة الحيوانات الخفية بعنوان "حيوانات خُرافية" في العام ذاته. وفي آخر الأمر، وَقعت هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية على اتفاقية تعاون مع قناة إذاعة ترنر الأمريكية للبدأ بإنتاج برنامج الحياة على الأرض في عام 1976.

سلسلة الحياة
في عام 1979 صدَرَ لديفيد برنامج الحياة على الأرض، وبسبب النجاحِ العالي الذي حَققه هذا البَرنامج فقد بدأت هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية بدراسة المُضي قدماً في العمل على سلسلة من البرامج المُشابهة. وبعد 5 سنوات من ذلك، أذيع برنامج الكوكب الحي للمرة الأولى. وفي هذه المرة جعل ديفيد محوَرَ بَرنامجه مَوضوع علم البيئة وتكيف المخلوقات الحية مع بيئاتها، وقد حقق البرنامج هوَ الآخر نجاحاً كبيراً ومبيعات عالية. وفي عام 1990 صدَرَ آخر برنامج من ثلاثية ديفيد الأصلية عن الحياة، وهوَ تجاربُ الحياة، والذي تناولَ علم سُلوك الحيوان خلال مَراحل حياته المُختلفة. وقد لاقت السلسلة اهتماماً كبيراً في الوَسط الشعبي.

تابعَ ديفيد لاحقاً في أوائل التسعينيات عملهُ على سلسلة الحياة وإنتاج المَزيد من وثائقياتها. فقدم برنامج الحياة في المَناطق المُتجمدة عام 1993، وكانت تلك هيَ أول سلسلة تلفزيونية تتناول تاريخ قارة أنتاركتيكا الطبيعيّ. ومع أن ديفيد بلغَ عند هذه المَرحلة سن التقاعُد، فقد بدأ بالعمل على سلسلة من الإنتاجات الأكثر تخصصاً عن الطبيعة افتتحها بالنبات. ففي عام 1995 أصدر وَثائقيّ حياة النباتات الخاصة، الذي عرَضَ النباتات كمخلوقات ديناميكية باستخدام فن تصوير إسراع الزمن لتسريع مَشاهد نموِّها.

مشاريع حالية
بالرُغم من بلوغ صانع الوَثائقيات ديفيد آتينبارا عقده التاسع فلا زال يَعمل على المَزيد من المَشاريع في الوَقت الحاضر لصالح قناتي هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية وسكاي للإذاعة. وفي الفترة الحالية يَكتب ديفيد ويُقدم برنامجاً بعُنوان الكوكب المُتجمد، وهيَ سلسلة كبيرة من هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية يُفترض أن تتناول تأثير الاحتباس الحراري على البشر والحياة البرية في المنطقة القطبية. وقد أنهى العمَلَ حديثاً أيضاً على وثائقيين للبي بي سي تو، والأول منهما هوَ مدغشقر (الذي أذيعَ للمرة الأولى أسبوعياً بين يومي 9 و23 فبراير عام 2011) وتناولَ الحياة البرية الفَريدة في جزيرة مدغشقر الأفريقية، بينما رافقهُ وثائقي بعُنوان "آتينبارا والبيضة العملاقة" (الذي أذيع للمرة الأولى في يَوم 3 مارس) وهوَ يَتحدث عن بيضة طائر فيل كان قد اكتشفها ديفيد في أول بعثة تصوير له إلى مدغشقر في الستينيات.

جوائز
جائزة كالينغا لتبسيط العلوم من منظمة اليونسكو (1981) مناصفة مع الأمريكي دينيس فلاناغان.

David Attenborough

Sir David Frederick Attenborough (/ˈætənbrə/; born 8 May 1926)[2][3] is an English broadcaster and natural historian. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection that together constitute a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth. He is a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in each of black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.[4][5] In 2018 and 2019, he received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator.[6][7]

Attenborough is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term.[8][9][10] In 2002, he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide poll for the BBC.[11] He is the younger brother of the director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough,[12] and older brother of the motor executive John Attenborough.
Early life and family
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal.[13] He is the middle of three long-lived sons; his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director who died in 2014, and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo who died in 2012.[14] During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.[15]

Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens.[16] He received encouragement aged seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent much time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department.[17] A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some fifty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.

In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.[18]

Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences.[19] In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.

In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan.[20] Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.[21][22] Susan is a former primary school headmistress.[23]

First years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service.

Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life.[24] However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big,[25] he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.[25]

Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.[26]

In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit,[27] which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series.[27]

In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming.[28] However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.[29]

BBC administration
Attenborough became the controller of BBC Two in March 1965, but had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.

BBC Two had been launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme.[30]

One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "tombstone" or "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Chris Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with the title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.

While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents."[31] Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of programmes during this period to cut costs, including sketches by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted.[32]

In 1969 Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.[16]

Return to broadcasting
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and immediately started work on his next project, a pre-arranged trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest but without the animal-collecting element.

After his return, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as the griffin and kraken.[33] Eventually the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.

Life series
See also: The Life Collection
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series also established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. In Rwanda, for example, Attenborough and his crew were granted privileged access to film Dian Fossey's research group of mountain gorillas. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth's success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were hitherto unfilmed. Computerised airline schedules, which had only recently been introduced, enabled the series to be elaborately devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents mid-sentence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he consciously restricted his time on camera to give his subjects top billing.

The success of Life on Earth prompted the BBC to consider a follow-up, and five years later, The Living Planet was screened. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life. The series drew strong reactions from the viewing public for its sequences of killer whales hunting sea lions on a Patagonian beach and chimpanzees hunting and violently killing a colobus monkey.

In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver five hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result, The Private Life of Plants (1995), showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth.

Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to the animal kingdom and in particular, birds. As he was neither an obsessive twitcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a Peabody Award the following year.[34] The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.

At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. In an interview that year, Attenborough was asked to sum up his achievement, and responded:

The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said "Don't be ridiculous!" These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in.[35]

However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should also be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."[36]

Other documentaries
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough has continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives.

Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers.[37] He has also narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. (Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television.[38]) In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.

As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour,[39] and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles.[40] In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.[41][42]

In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One.[43] The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957.[44][45]

By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of man's activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He also contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.[46]

Attenborough also forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010.[47] A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D at Christmas 2014.

Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha.[48]

More-recent projects
On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014.[49]

Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter.[50] The series was critically acclaimed[51] and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017, 14.1 million.[52] Attenborough narrates the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular.[53][54]

In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix.[55] He will also narrate Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area.[56] In March 2019, It was announced that Attenborough is to present an "urgent" one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts.[57]

Other work
From 1983, Attenborough worked on two environmentally themed musicals with the WWF and writers Peter Rose and Anne Conlon. Yanomamo was the first, about the Amazon rainforest, and the second, Ocean World, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in 1991. They were both narrated by Attenborough on their national tour and recorded on to audio cassette. Ocean World was also filmed for Channel 4 and later released. In 1990, he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif as part of the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series.[58]

In May 2005, Attenborough was appointed as patron of the UK's Blood Pressure Association, which provides information and support to people with hypertension.[59] In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they are broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.[60] Part of Radio 4's A Point of View strand, the talks are also available as podcasts.[61]

He appeared in the 2009 Children's Prom at the BBC Promenade Concerts and in the Last Night of the Proms on 12 September 2009, playing a floor polisher in Sir Malcolm Arnold's "A Grand, Grand Overture" (after which he was "shot" by Rory Bremner, who was playing the gun). In 2009, he also became a patron of Population Matters (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust),[62] a UK charity advocating sustainable human populations.[63]

He is also a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park[64] and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine. Attenborough is also an honorary member of BSES Expeditions, a youth development charity that operates challenging scientific research expeditions to remote wilderness environments.

Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator"[65] and "the greatest broadcaster of our time."[66] His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.[67]

Styles and honours
Mr David Attenborough (1926–1974)
Mr David Attenborough CBE (1974–1983)
Mr David Attenborough CBE FRS (1983–1985)
Sir David Attenborough CBE FRS (1985–1991)
Sir David Attenborough CVO CBE FRS (1991–1996)
Sir David Attenborough CH CVO CBE FRS (1996–2005)
Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS (2005–2007)
Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FSA (2007–)
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities,[68] more than any other person.[69][70] In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University with whom he has had a close association throughout his career. He also has honorary Doctor of Science awards from the University of Cambridge (1984) and University of Oxford (1988).[71] In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University."[72] David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol.[73] In 2010, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.[74]

Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000) and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society[75] and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.[76]

Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a special programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.

Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll,[77] and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award.[78] He has also been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine.[79]

In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.[80] In December 2013, he was awarded the freedom of the city of Bristol.[81]

In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.[82] The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".[83]

In May 2016, it was announced that a new British polar research ship will be named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research subs was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.[84]

Species named in Attenborough's honour
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour.[85] Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons,[86] a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).[87] Arthropods named after Attenborough include a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi),[88] a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi),[89] a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi),[90][91][92] a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi).[93] The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him.[94] Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi),[95] a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi),[95] a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi),[96] a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi),[97] and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari.[99] A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth.[100] The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016.[101][102] The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin.[103][104] In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him.[105] A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.[106]

In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment.[107] The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi.[108]

Bad Boys For Life

Bad Boys for Life is a 2020 American action comedy film directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Will Smith and Doug Belgrad, and starring Smith and Martin Lawrence. The sequel to Bad Boys II (2003) and the third and final installment in the Bad Boys trilogy, the film follows detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett reuniting once again when someone starts murdering people involved in an old case. The film co-stars Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Charles Melton, Paola Núñez, Kate del Castillo, Nicky Jam, and Joe Pantoliano.

A third Bad Boys film was discussed after the success of the second, with Michael Bay stating he would be interested in returning to direct but budget constraints would make it difficult. The film went through several attempts at development over the next decade, with various writers and directors attached. The project was finally announced in October 2018, and filming took place from January through June 2019 in Atlanta and Miami.

Bad Boys for Life is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on January 17, 2020, by Sony Pictures Releasing.
Plot
After an assassination attempt on Mike Lowrey, he and Marcus Burnett decide to work together one last time to bring down a mysterious assassin with a link to Mike's past.

Cast
Will Smith as Detective Mike Lowrey
Martin Lawrence as Detective Marcus Burnett
Vanessa Hudgens as Kelly[5]
Alexander Ludwig as Dorn
Charles Melton as Rafe
Paola Núñez as Rita
Kate del Castillo as Isabel Aretas
Nicky Jam as Zway-Lo [6]
Joe Pantoliano as Captain Conrad Howard
Theresa Randle as Theresa Burnett, Marcus' wife[7]
Jacob Scipio as Armando Armas, the main antagonist
Jamie Neumann
Massi Furlan as Lee Taglin
Thomas Brag as Cake Boy
Dennis Greene as Reggie
Michael Bay as Wedding MC
DJ Khaled[8] as Manny the Butcher[9]
Production
Development
In June 2008, Michael Bay (director of the first two Bad Boys films) stated that he may direct Bad Boys III, but that the greatest obstacle to the potential sequel would be the cost, as he and Will Smith demand some of the highest salaries in the film industry.[10] By August 2009, Columbia Pictures had hired Peter Craig to write the script for Bad Boys III.[11] In February 2011, Martin Lawrence reiterated that the film was in development.[12] In June 2014, Bruckheimer announced that screenwriter David Guggenheim was working on the storyline for the sequel.[13] Two months later, Lawrence said a script had been written and parts had been cast.[14] By June 2015, director Joe Carnahan was in early talks to write and possibly direct the film.[15] In August 2015, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced that Bad Boys III would be released on February 17, 2017, and that additional sequel, Bad Boys IV, is scheduled for release on July 3, 2019.[16] On March 5, 2016, the film was pushed to June 2, 2017.[17] Producers planned to begin production in early 2017.[18] On August 11, 2016, the film was pushed back once again to January 12, 2018, to avoid box office competition with the upcoming DC Comics film Wonder Woman, and retitled Bad Boys for Life.[19] Lawrence revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that filming may start in March 2017.[20] On February 6, 2017, it was announced that the film's release date has been delayed for the third time, to November 9, 2018.[21] On March 7, 2017, Carnahan left the movie due to scheduling conflicts.[22] In August 2017, Sony removed the third film from their release schedule and later in the month Lawrence said the film would not be happening.[23]

In February 2018, it was reported that a sequel film was again being planned and would be directed by Belgian directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprising their roles.[24] According to Geek Worldwide, the third installment in the Bad Boys franchise will film from November 2018 to March 2019 in Miami and Atlanta with the release date scheduled for January 17, 2020.[25][26]

Casting
In October 2018, Variety revealed that Sony was close to green-lighting the film's production.[27] In December 2018, it was reported that Joe Pantoliano, who played Captain Howard in the previous films would return to play the character.[28] In February 2019, Kate del Castillo joined the cast of the film.[29] In March 2019, it was reported that Theresa Randle, who played Marcus's wife, Theresa, in the previous films would also return to play the character.[30]

Filming
Principal photography began on January 14, 2019 in downtown Atlanta, Georgia[31][32][33] and wrapped on June 7, 2019 in Miami Beach, Florida.[34]

Music
The film will be composed by Lorne Balfe. Both trailers for the film included an remix/mashup of "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle (the franchise's theme) and "Bad Boy for Life" by P. Diddy, Black Rob and Mark Curry.

An official soundtrack album to the film, entitled Bad Boys For Life The Soundtrack was announced by its executive producer, DJ Khaled and scheduled for release on the same day as the film. Artists The Black Eyed Peas and J Balvin released a song titled "Ritmo", which served as a lead single on October 11, 2019 for the film's soundtrack.[35]

The 10 song soundtrack also features tracks by Meek Mill, City Girls, Quavo, Rick Ross, Rich the Kid, Bryson Tiller, Nicky Jam, Daddy Yankee, Jaden Smith, Farruko, Pitbull, Lil Jon, Buju Banton[36], and DJ Durel.[37]

Release
Bad Boys for Life had its world premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre on January 14, 2020. It is scheduled to be released in the United States on January 17, 2020, by Sony Pictures Releasing.

Marketing
The first official trailer for the film was released on September 4, 2019.[38] The film's second trailer was released on November 5.[39]

Reception
Box office
In the United States and Canada, Bad Boys for Life will be released alongside Dolittle, and is projected to gross $35–45 million from 3,740 theaters in its opening weekend, and a total of around $48 million over the four-day MLK weekend.[40][41]

Critical response
The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 76% based on 82 reviews, and an average rating of 6.12/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Loaded up with action and a double helping of leading-man charisma, Bad Boys for Life reinvigorates this long-dormant franchise by playing squarely to its strengths."[42] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews

Sandi Toksvig

Sandra Birgitte Toksvig, OBE (/ˈtɒksvɪɡ/, Danish pronunciation: [sænti ˈtˢɒksˌviːˀ]; born 3 May 1958)[2] is a British-Danish writer, broadcaster, actor, and producer on British radio, stage, and television. She is also a political activist, having co-founded the Women's Equality Party in 2015. She has written plays, novels, and books for children. In 1994, she came out as a lesbian.[3]

In 2016, Toksvig took over from Stephen Fry as host of the BBC television quiz show QI, having previously spent ten years hosting The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. From 2017-2020 she was co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, alongside comedian Noel Fielding.[4][5]

Toksvig was installed as Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth in October 2012, and is the president of the Women of the Year Lunch. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.
Early life
Toksvig was born in Denmark. Her father, Claus Toksvig, was a Danish journalist, broadcaster, and foreign correspondent, so Toksvig spent most of her youth outside Denmark, mostly in New York City. Her mother, Julie Anne Toksvig (née Brett), is British.[7] She has an older brother, Nick, who is a journalist, and a younger sister, Jenifer, a librettist, who was born when Sandi was 12. When Sandi was 24, she was appointed Jenifer's legal guardian.[8][9] In 1969, her father covered the landing of the first man on the moon from mission control. Toksvig was holding the hand of Neil Armstrong's secretary during the landing.[10] She attended Tormead School, an independent girls' school near Guildford, when her father was based in London. Her first job, at the age of 18, was a position as a follow spot operator for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.[11][12]

She read law, archaeology and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree and receiving two prizes for outstanding achievement (The Raemakers and the Theresa Montefiore Awards).[13] One of her law supervisors was Lord Denning.[14]

Career
Beginnings
Toksvig began her comedy career at Girton, where she wrote and performed in the first all-woman show at the Footlights. She was there at the same time as fellow members Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and Emma Thompson, and wrote additional material for the Perrier award-winning Footlights Revue. She was also a member of the university's Light Entertainment Society.

She started her television career on children's series, presenting No. 73 (1982–1986), the Sandwich Quiz,[16] The Saturday Starship, Motormouth, Gilbert's Fridge, for Television South, and factual programmes such as Island Race and The Talking Show, produced by Open Media for Channel 4. She also appeared as a guest presenter in 2000 on Time Team at a dig in York (season 7 episode 3).

Comedy
In the comedy circuit, Toksvig performed at the first night of the Comedy Store in London, and was once part of their Players, an improvisational comedy team.[17]

In television, she appeared as a panellist in comedy shows such as Call My Bluff (a regular as a team captain), Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mock the Week, QI, and Have I Got News for You, where she appeared on the very first episode in 1990.[18] She was also the host of What the Dickens, a Sky Arts quiz show.

On radio, she is a familiar voice for BBC Radio 4 listeners, having appeared on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, The Unbelievable Truth, and as the chair of The News Quiz, where she replaced Simon Hoggart in September 2006, but left in June 2015 in order to enter politics to champion women's rights. Her final show was first broadcast on 26 June. She presented Radio 4's travel programme Excess Baggage until it was axed in 2012. [19]

Drama and factual
In 1993, Toksvig wrote a musical, Big Night Out at the Little Sands Picture Palace, for Nottingham Playhouse, co-starring with Anita Dobson and Una Stubbs. In 2002, it was re-written, with Dilly Keane, for the Watford Palace Theatre, in which they appeared with Bonnie Langford.[20]

Toksvig and Elly Brewer wrote a Shakespeare deconstruction, The Pocket Dream, which Toksvig performed at the Nottingham Playhouse and which transferred to the West End for a short run. The pair also wrote the 1992 TV series The Big One, in which she also starred. She has appeared in a number of stage plays, including Androcles and the Lion, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Comedy of Errors.

In 1996, she narrated the Dragons! interactive CD-ROM published by Oxford University Press and developed by Inner Workings, along with Harry Enfield.[21] The software was primarily aimed at children and featured songs and poems about dragons. She also narrated the Winnie the Witch CD-ROM. She appeared in the Doctor Who audio drama Red by Big Finish Productions, released in August 2006. In December 2006, she hosted and sang at the London Gay Men's Chorus sold-out Christmas show, Make the Yuletide Gay, at the Barbican Centre.[22] Over Christmas and New Year 2007/2008, she narrated the pantomime Cinderella at the Old Vic Theatre. In October 2011, she narrated the new musical Soho Cinders at the Queen's Theatre, London. In 2011 she hosted a second season of BBC Two's Antiques Master.

Toksvig wrote a play entitled Bully Boy which focused on post-traumatic stress among British servicemen. The play premièred at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in May 2011, and starred Anthony Andrews.[23] The play then launched the debut season of St James Theatre in September 2012, the first new West End theatre to open in 30 years.[24]

In the 2013 Christmas Special of BBC's Call the Midwife, Toksvig made a cameo appearance as grumpy ward nurse Sister Gibbs.[25][26]

On 28 April 2015, it was announced that Toksvig would leave BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz in June at the end of the 28th series, which was scheduled to begin on 15 May of that year. She said: "I have decided it is time to move on and, of course, I feel sad but I think it's the right moment. The show is in great shape and, like a good house guest, you should always depart when people still wish you'd stay a bit longer." The BBC said Toksvig had made the "difficult decision" to leave in order "to embark on a new and exciting stage of her career".[27] On 30 April 2015, Toksvig announced that her decision to quit The News Quiz had been made in order to allow her to help set up a new political party named the Women's Equality Party.[28][29]

In November 2015, Toksvig was a guest of BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Her choices included Joe Nichols ("What's a Guy Gotta Do"), Gustav Winckler, The Weather Girls, Barbra Streisand, and Bonnie Langford. Her book choice was The Ashley Book of Knots, and her luxury item was an endless supply of the Daily Mail.[30]

Her most recent play Silver Lining opened at the Rose Theatre Kingston on 11 February 2017, before touring to Portsmouth, Oxford, Cambridge, Ipswich, Keswick, York, and Salford. It centres around five elderly ladies and a young carer in a retirement home which is about to be flooded by a storm. It stars Rachel Davies, Keziah Joseph, Maggie McCarthy, Joanna Monro, Sheila Reid, and Amanda Walker. Toksvig's son, Theo Toksvig-Stewart, made his professional stage debut in the play.[31]


On 11 June 2019, Toksvig appeared on, Former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard’s podcast. Notably, Toksvig states “Wikipedia is a marvelous idea and the idea is that it is a crowd sourced encyclopedia of knowledge, what a fantastic notion. But what’s happening is that women are disappearing so 90% of Wikipedia’s content is about men and their achievements and 9% is about women. 1% are still making up their mind. So that proportion is completely out of kilter and we desperately need to do something about it. Part of the problem is that it is edited by volunteers but there are about 350,000 uber volunteers that tend, no offence to them, to be the same kind of guy who has the time to sit and do it and doesn’t have laundry to do and are actively editing women out. There are two issues: 1) women’s achievements are not being inputted and 2) women are actively being edited out… I am intent on trying to change this if we can”[32]

Writing
She has written more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults, starting in 1994 with Tales from the Norse's Mouth, a fiction tale for children. In 1995, she sailed around the coast of Britain with John McCarthy, who had been held hostage in Beirut. In 2003, she published Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey, about her travels in the USA retracing her childhood. She writes regular columns for Good Housekeeping, the Sunday Telegraph and The Lady. In October 2008, she published Girls Are Best, a history book for girls.[33]

In 2009, her collected columns for The Sunday Telegraph were published in book form as The Chain of Curiosity. In 2012, she published her book, Valentine Grey, an historical novel set in the Boer War.[34] Her 2015 young adult book, Hitler's Canary[35] is a Holocaust story told by a boy named Bamse and his family. The characters are based on Toksvig's own father and grandmother; the heroism of the story closely resembles the story's own experiences during the war.[36] Her memoir "Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus" was published on October 29, 2019.

Television presenter
In 2012–13 Toksvig presented 1001 Things You Should Know for Channel 4 daytime. Toksvig began presenting the revival edition of the daytime game show Fifteen-to-One in April 2014.[37] It is an hour long instead of the original half-hour edition presented by William G. Stewart. After two series had been broadcast, in June 2015, Channel 4 announced that a further three would be made, hosted by Toksvig.[38]

Toksvig took over from Stephen Fry as host of QI, making her "the first female presenter of a British mainstream TV comedy panel show", a fact she found extraordinary in 2016.[39] She hosted the first episode of the show's series "N", which was broadcast on 21 October 2016.[40]

On 16 March 2017 she was announced as the new co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off on Channel 4, alongside Noel Fielding. They replaced the previous hosts, Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc. In January 2020, she announced she was leaving the show to focus on other work commitments.[41]

Politics and activism
Toksvig first came to wider public prominence in 1994, when the charity Save the Children dropped her services as compere of its 75th anniversary celebrations after she came out,[15] but following a direct action protest by the Lesbian Avengers,[42] the charity apologised.[43][44]

Toksvig supports the charity and pressure group Liberty, hosting its 2012 awards ceremony.[45] She was appointed president of the Women of the Year Lunch.[46] An atheist and humanist, Toksvig is a patron of Humanists UK.[47]

In October 2012, as the scale of the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal became apparent, and amid claims that during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there was a culture within the BBC which tolerated sexual harassment, Toksvig stated that she was groped by a "famous individual" on air in the 1980s.[48][49] Toksvig said the allegations of inappropriate behaviour at the BBC "did not surprise me at all". In September 2018, as the BBC gender pay gap controversy continued to unfold, Toksvig reported that she was only paid 40% of what Fry, her predecessor, had received. Toksvig had earlier told the Radio Times it would be “absurd” if she did not receive the same salary as him for chairing QI.[50]

In 2003 she stood as a candidate in the election for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, supporting a campaign against student fees.[51] She was defeated in the first round of voting, achieving 1,179 first-place votes out of about 8,000 cast.[52] The election was won by Chris Patten. Almost a decade later she succeeded Sheila Hancock as Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth.[53]

Toksvig's party-political sympathies have developed over the years. She was part of Red Wedge's comedy tour in the 1980s, which supported the Labour Party. By the 2004 elections, she was a high-profile celebrity supporter of the Liberal Democrats.[54][55] She has received some criticism for joking about the Tories in 2011 (they've "put the 'N' into cuts" to child benefit),[56] but has said Prime Minister Theresa May is "a good person"[39] She has also joked about UKIP leader Nigel Farage.[57] In 2012, she said in an interview that "I don't think there's a party that represents anything I believe in".[58]

Women's Equality Party
In April 2015, Toksvig chaired the first, informal, conference of a new political party, the Women's Equality Party,[59][60] and then left her job as presenter of The News Quiz to formally co-found it.[28][29] She later explained that she had decided that it was "not too late to fight the good fight, after all".[61] In September the same year she announced the dates for a comedy tour to raise funds for the party.[62][63] The party's full set of policies were launched at Conway Hall, 20 October 2015.[64][65]

Personal life
As an eleven-year-old, Toksvig was present with her father, a leading Danish foreign affairs journalist, at NASA Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas during the first Moon landing.[66][67] In an appearance on BBC 1 show The TV That Made Me, she stated she held the hand of Neil Armstrong's nervous secretary to calm the woman down during the final moments. She also said she had a lifetime fear of children's television puppet Basil Brush, so she wrote a 2002 episode of The Basil Brush Show entitled "Molly Christmas".
Toksvig is the mother of two daughters (Megan and Jesse) and a son (Theo).[69][70][71] The children were carried by her then-partner, Peta Stewart, from whom she separated in 1997,[68] and were conceived through artificial insemination by donor Christopher Lloyd-Pack,[15] younger brother of the actor Roger Lloyd-Pack.[72][73]

It was having three young children that made her decide to come out, because, to the best of her knowledge, there were no out lesbians in British public life, and she did not want her children to grow up ashamed of having two mothers. Toksvig was warned she might never work again, and the family faced death threats and had to go into hiding.[3]

She lives on a houseboat in Wandsworth[74] with psychotherapist Debbie Toksvig,[69] whom she joined in a civil partnership in 2007.[75] They renewed their vows on 29 March 2014, the day same-sex marriage was introduced in England and Wales,[76] and in December 2014, their civil partnership was converted into a marriage.[77]

Toksvig became a British citizen in 2013.[78] She describes her "posh" accent as being the result of a deliberate attempt to copy the voice of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, after being ostracised at boarding school for having an American accent.[30]

In her late 50s, she lost a significant amount of weight on medical advice, and credits this with giving her the confidence to go back to television.[39]

Awards and honours
1997 – The Grand Order of Water Rats Show Business Personality of the Year
2007 – Political Humorist of the Year at the Channel 4 Political Awards[79] and 2007 – Radio Broadcaster of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild.[80]
2007 – Read it or Else Award from Coventry Inspiration Book Awards for Hitler's Canary
2008 – Broadcaster of the Year at the Stonewall Awards
2009 – Voice of the Listener & Viewer Award for Individual Contribution to Radio
2010 – Honorary Doctor of Letters University of Portsmouth
2012 – Honorary Doctor of Letters York St John University
2012 – Honorary Doctor of Letters University of Surrey
2012 – Honorary Fellowship Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
2013 – Voice of the Listener & Viewer Award for Excellence in Broadcasting (Roberts Radio Special Award)
2014 – Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Broadcasting
2016 – Honorary Doctor of Letters University of Westminster
2016 – Honorary Fellowship Newnham College, Cambridge
2017 – CoScan (Confederation of Scandinavian Societies) International Award[81]
2018 – Honorary Doctor of Letters University of Leicester[82]
2019 - Honorary Fellowship Girton College Cambridg

Wendy Williams

Wendy Williams Hunter (born Wendy Joan Williams; July 18, 1964)[2] is an American television and radio presenter, businesswoman, author, actress and media personality. She has hosted the nationally syndicated television talk show The Wendy Williams Show since 2008.

Prior to television, Williams was a radio DJ and host and quickly became known in New York as a "shock jockette". She gained notoriety for her on-air spats with celebrities and was the subject of the 2006 VH1 reality TV series The Wendy Williams Experience which broadcast events surrounding her radio show. She was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.

She has written a New York Times best-selling autobiography and six other books, and has created product lines including a fashion line, a jewelry collection and a wig line. On her 50th birthday, the council of Asbury Park, New Jersey renamed the street on which she grew up Wendy Williams Way.
Early life
Williams was born on July 18, 1964 in Asbury Park, New Jersey.[2] She is the second of three children born to Shirley and Thomas Williams.[2] At age 5,[2] she moved with her family to the Wayside section of Ocean Township, New Jersey.[3] Williams graduated from Ocean Township High School,[4] and from 1982 to 1986 she attended Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she graduated[5] with a Bachelor's of Science degree in communications[6] and was a DJ for the college radio station, WRBB.[7]

Career
Radio
Williams began her career working for WVIS in the United States Virgin Islands.[5] Less than a year later, she obtained an afternoon position at Washington, D.C.-based station WOL. Williams commuted between DC and Queens, New York, to work an overnight weekend shift at WQHT.[8]

In 1989, Williams began at urban contemporary WRKS (now WEPN-FM) in New York City as a substitute disc jockey. WRKS hired her full-time for its morning show. A year later, Williams moved to an afternoon drive-time shift, eventually winning the Billboard Award for "Best On-Air Radio Personality" in 1993.[citation needed] In December 1994, Emmis Broadcasting purchased WRKS and switched Williams to the company's other New York property, hip-hop formatted WQHT ("Hot 97"), as WRKS was reformatted into an urban adult contemporary outlet. She was fired from Hot 97 in 1998.[3]

Williams was hired by a Philadelphia urban station, WUSL ("Power 99FM"). Her husband, Kevin Hunter, became her agent.[3] She was very open about her personal life on air, discussing her miscarriages, breast enhancement surgery,[3] and former drug addiction.[5] She helped the station move from 14th place in the ratings to 2nd.[3]

Williams has stated that Bill Cosby attempted to get her fired in 1991 and 1992. She also believes that Cosby is guilty of sexual assault.[9]

In 2001, Williams returned to the New York airwaves when WBLS hired her full-time for a syndicated 2–6 p.m. time slot. Williams' friend, MC Spice of Boston, offered his voiceover services to the show, often adding short rap verses tailored specifically for Williams' show. The New York Times stated that her "show works best when its elements – confessional paired with snarkiness – are conflated," and cited a 2003 interview with Whitney Houston as an example.[10] During the highly publicized interview[11] that "went haywire" and included "a lot of bleeped language", Williams "asked [Houston], insistently, about her drug and spending habits".[12]

By 2008, she was syndicated in Redondo Beach, California; Shreveport, Louisiana; Wilmington, Delaware; Toledo, Ohio; Columbia, South Carolina; Emporia, Virginia; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Tyler, Texas; and Alexandria, Louisiana, among other markets.[citation needed]

Williams left her radio show in 2009 to focus on her television program and spend more time with her family. She was also inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.[13]

The Wendy Williams Show
In 2008, Debmar-Mercury offered Williams a six-week television trial of her own talk show. On July 14, 2008, Williams debuted her daytime talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, in four cities during the summer of 2008. During the tryout, The New York Times snarkily remarked that the show created a "breakthrough in daytime" by introducing the genre of the "backtalk show.".[14]

After a successful run, Fox signed a deal with Debmar-Mercury to broadcast the show nationally on their stations beginning in July 2009. In addition, BET picked up cable rights to broadcast the show at night. In 2010, BET started airing the show internationally in 54 countries through BET International.[15]

Williams has received multiple nominations at the Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host and the show itself was for Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment.[16] The show attracts 2.4 million daily viewers on average, with Williams trading off daily with Ellen DeGeneres as the number one female host on daytime television.[17]

The Wendy Williams Show has been renewed through the 2019–20 television season on the Fox Television Stations.The renewal will keep Wendy on air through its 11th season. During the November 2015 sweeps period, the talk show finished either No. 1 or 2 in the key demo of women 25-54 in 55% of the U.S. and 20 of the top-25 markets.[18]

Williams had not missed a show until February 2018, when she took one week off; however, on February 21, 2018, Williams announced that her show would be on three weeks' hiatus due to her complications with Graves' disease and hyperthyroidism.[19]

In January 2019, a statement from the Williams Hunter family revealed that Williams had been hospitalized due to complications from Graves' disease and that her return to the show would be delayed indefinitely as a result.[20] Guest hosts such as Nick Cannon filled in for Wendy during her absence; she returned on March 4, 2019.[21]

Other television appearances
Williams has made appearances in the television series Martin (1992) and in the soap opera One Life to Live (2011).

Williams filled in for Jodi Applegate on WNYW's morning television show, Good Day New York (2007), and hosted a game show for GSN called Love Triangle (2011) for which she and her husband Kevin Hunter served as executive producers.[22]

Williams played a judge on the Lifetime network show Drop Dead Diva (2011) and served as a guest judge on The Face (2013).[23] She was also a contestant, paired with pro Tony Dovolani on season 12 of Dancing with the Stars (2011); she was eliminated second.[24]

In February 2013, it was announced that Williams and her husband and manager, Kevin, were launching a reality television production company, Wendy Williams Productions.[25] that will produce unscripted content, including reality television and game shows.[26] Williams was an executive producer on the show Celebrities Undercover (2014).[23]

Williams also executive produced the Lifetime biopic Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which premiered on November 15, 2014.[27] In September 2015, the documentary series Death By Gossip with Wendy Williams premiered on the Investigation Discovery channel, both hosted and produced by Williams.[28]

Film
Williams appeared in the film adaptation of Steve Harvey's book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, titled Think Like a Man (2012), and its sequel, Think Like a Man Too (2014).

In 2012, it was announced Williams would enter into a "production alliance" with producers Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones to create movies and television shows aimed at multicultural audiences.[29][30] These projects will appear under the heading "Wendy Williams presents"[30] and their first project will be VH1 adaptation of a Star Jones novel.[29]

On Oct. 10, 2019, Williams announced at the top of her show that she had made a cameo, released the same day, in Todrick Hall's music video for his song "Dripeesha."

Theater
In 2013, Williams was cast to play the role of Matron "Mama" Morton on the Broadway musical Chicago.[31][32] She began her tenure on July 2[33] and finished her seven-week run on August 11, 2013. Her preparations for the musical were documented in the TV Guide docuseries Wendy Williams: How You Doin', Broadway?!,[34] which was produced by her own production company, Wendy Williams Productions.[35]

Stand-up comedy
Before Wendy turned 50, stand-up comedy was on her bucket list. In 2014, Lipshtick called Williams to participate in their first all-female-based comedy series at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Williams made her sold-out comedy debut on July 11, 2014.[36] Williams' comedy tour was called "The Sit-down Comedy Tour." Williams returned to Lipshtick on October 31, 2014, and November 1, 2014, after she made a sold-out debut in July.[37]

Williams hosted her "How You Laughin'" Comedy Series at NJPAC on November 15, 2014, featuring Luenell, Jonathan Martin, Pat Brown, Hadiyah Robinson, and Meme Simpson.[38] In 2015, Williams announced a 12-city comedy tour called "The Wendy Williams Sit Down Tour: Too Real For Stand-Up."[39]

In 2019, Williams hosted the "Wendy Williams & Friends: For the Record... Umm Hmmm!" U.S. comedy tour featuring performances from various comedians.[40][41] The first date, scheduled for August 17, 2019 in Newark, New Jersey, was canceled the day before because of a “scheduling conflict,” according to the venue, but Page Six reported low ticket sales were to blame.[42] More dates in Philadelphia, Ohio and Atlanta were ultimately canceled, with statements from the venues saying the tour was "sidelined by the headlines."[43] The final remaining date in St. Petersburg, Florida, which was rescheduled from August 2, 2019, to September 21, 2019, was canceled September 20. The venue cited "unforeseen circumstances."[44]

Business
HSN clothing line
By partnering with the Home Shopping Network (HSN), Williams debuted a line of dresses, pants, sweaters and skirts fit for the everyday woman. Her HSN Clothing line debuted on March 28, 2015. Williams told viewers on her talk show that according to HSN, the debut was their most watched premiere since the onset of the program. The Wendy Williams line is sold exclusively at HSN.[45]

Adorn
Williams sells a line of jewelry products on the home shopping network, QVC, called "Adorn by Wendy Williams".[citation needed]

Williams and her husband, Kevin Hunter, commissioned the China-based manufacturing firm Max Harvest International Holdings to make 12,140 pairs of shoes bearing the logo of her brand, Adorn.[46] The owners of Max Harvest International Holdings were said to have gone into hiding after the owner of the shoe factory who made the shoes kidnapped one of their managers and held the man prisoner for two weeks before releasing him, and Williams' failure to pay was cited the reason, reported by the New York Daily News.[47] The manager and his wife retained lawyer Staci Riordan of Los Angeles.[48] Their representative says they've been in negotiations for several months in order to reach a settlement.[46] Williams declined to comment on the matter.[48]

Endorsements
Williams was a spokesperson for Georges Veselle champagne.[49] She posed for PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" advert campaign in 2012.[50]

Personal life
In her autobiography, Wendy's Got the Heat, she uses the pseudonym Robert Morris III to refer to her first husband, whom she describes as a salesperson.[51] They were separated after five months, followed by a year-and-a-half of divorce proceedings.[52][53]

On November 30, 1997, Williams married her second husband, Kevin Hunter.[54] Their son, Kevin Hunter Jr., was born in 2000.[54] Williams is a Christian and has stated that she prays before every show.[55] On March 19, 2019, Williams announced on-air that she was living in a sober house in the tri-state area due to her past cocaine addiction.[56] Her husband and son were the only two who knew about it before the show aired.[57] Further adding to the situation, it was confirmed by Williams' representative on April 11, 2019, that she had filed for divorce from her husband after she found out that he had just fathered a child with a woman named Sharina Hudson.[58] Williams subsequently stated that she wanted to go "someplace quiet"[59] – referring to the sober house – as it was her way of processing what had happened, free of input from friends or family.

Williams has Graves' disease and hyperthyroidism[19] causing her to miss episodes in 2018 and 2019. In January 2019, she revealed that she had been hospitalized due to complications from the disease. Also in 2019, Williams revealed she has lymphedema, a non-fatal condition that causes swelling of the lower extremities.[60]

In 2008, Nicole Spence, talent booker for The Wendy Williams Experience, filed papers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suing Williams. Spence claimed Williams' husband Kevin demanded sex from Spence on many occasions and created a hostile work environment by threatening and assaulting his wife on company premises.[61][62] On June 11, 2008, Spence filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against Williams, Hunter, and Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in federal court in Manhattan.[63] Both Williams and Hunter deny the charges.[61][64] The case was dismissed with prejudice on October 22, 2008.[65]

As of 2019, Wendy lives in Manhattan with two cats – one named My Way and the other named Chit Chat – whom she introduced to the world via photograph and anecdotes during her Season 11 premiere. She followed up with one of her After Show segments, which she titled "New Cat Mom."[66] On her main show segment, Williams stated that she had rescued the cats, who had been born to a feral; she adopted with the help of a longtime Wendy watcher who connected her with a veterinarian at the Cat Care Clinic in Nyack, New York. Williams further discussed the cats at the top of her October 7, 2019 show.[67]

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Williams sometimes has a bug-eyed appearance, a side-effect of her hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease, which cause pressure behind the eye muscles.[68] Additionally, Williams wears wigs because she has stated that her natural hair is thin due to these medical conditions.[68] She often refers to herself as a "wiggy"[69] and has names for her wigs like New Bitch or Rita Ora's Older Sister,[68] changing length, texture, and color daily to match her on-air outfits and the changing seasons of the year. She has stated that she wears turbans around the house, and can at times be seen wearing a turban on-air, such as during "Wendy, What's Good: Turbans & More!",[70] and during her Pre-Show[71] and After Show segments, like "Turbanalicious".[72]

Williams has had breast implants[73] since 1994;[74] they have become part of her signature look. She has stated that prior to surgery, she had a "floppy A and fatty B"[70] upon which she improved to a double D cup. She jokes on-air that she is shaped "like a capital P"[75][76] due to her large chest and "flat booty"[75] and that her breasts are her co-stars.[70]

Williams has a tattoo that covers the scar she got from a tummy-tuck.[76]

Williams always wears a ring in the shape of a flower, which she has stated is her good-luck charm, and that missing her ring would be a harbinger of her show ending. She occasionally wears bejeweled "readers"[77] or "cheaters," some adorned by artistic Wendy fans.

Williams likes matching expensive clothing items with very affordable off-the-rack items, the latter falling into what she calls "cheap and cheerful."[78][79] As such, she is a fan of upscale finery like cashmere, Christian Louboutin shoes, Chanel sneakers, and wrap dresses by Diane von Furstenberg[80] mixed with practical items like dresses with pockets, fabric with stretch, and Target or Walgreens[81] leggings. She also enjoys frivolous outfits involving crinoline, or revealing streetwear like very short shorts--what she refers to as "panty shorts" or "pum-pum shorts."[82] Until 2018, Williams wore high heels on air very frequently; she had to discontinue due to her lymphedema condition and vertigo caused by her other two health conditions.[83]

Williams's tastes are reflected in her own fashion lines sold through QVC and HSN.[84] A self-professed shoe enthusiast in general, Williams has led her After Show camera into her shoe closet multiple times. She has also admitted outlets like CBS Sunday Morning[85] and Us Weekly[86] for similar tours. Additionally, Williams spotlights her show guests' shoe choices with "Shoe Cam."[87]

As of 2016, Williams became a fan of microblading.[88] In 2019, Williams drew special attention to a fluffy pink coat she started wearing, designed by Modern Mistress[89], nicknaming it "The Poof."[90][91]

Books
Williams is the author of books including:

Non-fiction
Wendy's Got the Heat (2003), coauthored with Karen Hunter[92] Atria; 1st edition (August 5, 2003)
The Wendy Williams Experience (2005)[93]
Ask Wendy: Straight-Up Advice for All the Drama in Your Life (2013) ISBN 9780062268389
Fiction
Drama Is Her Middle Name: The Ritz Harper Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2006), coauthored with Karen Hunter[94]
Is the Bitch Dead, Or What?: The Ritz Harper Chronicles, Book 2 (2007), coauthored with Karen Hunter[95]
Ritz Harper Goes to Hollywood! (Ritz Harper Chronicles) (2009), coauthored with Zondra Hughes[96]
Hold Me in Contempt: A Romance (2014) ISBN 978-0062268419