But who is John Pork, really? Where did he come from? Why is he calling you? And why did the internet briefly convince itself that he had died? This article breaks down everything you need to know about the pig-man who took over your feed.

Who Is John Pork? The Short Answer

John Pork is a virtual influencer: a fictional, computer-generated character with a social media presence built to look like a real person. His defining feature is his appearance — a fully human body dressed in ordinary, fashionable clothes, topped with the realistic, uncanny head of a pig.

He is not a real person, and there is no single human “behind the mask” in the way a costumed mascot works. Instead, John Pork is a digital creation — an anthropomorphic pigman who posts selfies, travels to scenic locations, and speaks directly to his audience as though he were just another influencer sharing his life online. The gap between how normal his content is and how bizarre his face looks is exactly what makes him so funny.

The Origins: Where Did John Pork Come From?

John Pork’s story begins well before he became a meme. He first appeared on Instagram in 2018 under the handle @john.pork, positioning himself as a fashion model and lifestyle influencer based in Palermo, Italy.

His earliest posts were selfies taken at real-world tourist destinations — one of his first images showed him standing outside Doune Castle in Scotland, and another placed him on the Isle of Skye. The formula was simple and consistent: put a photorealistic pig head on a human body, drop him into ordinary influencer settings, and let the surreal comedy speak for itself. He described himself as a fashion model, talked about his love of travel, and generally carried himself with the earnest self-promotion of any aspiring internet personality.

According to profiles of the character, John Pork was developed as an original digital character by creators working under a studio project exploring how a fictional persona could exist and interact within the real world through social media. In other words, he wasn’t an accident — he was a deliberate experiment in virtual-influencer storytelling that happened to strike a nerve.

It’s worth noting that John Pork predates the current flood of AI-generated meme characters. When he debuted in 2018, the kind of hyperrealistic AI imagery that’s everywhere today was far less common, which is part of why his early look felt so uniquely uncanny and hard to place.

The Big Break: “John Pork Is Calling”

For years, John Pork was a niche curiosity — a weird account with a modest following that occasionally surfaced in “look at this strange thing” posts. His transformation from obscure oddity into global meme happened in March 2023.

That month, a video format took off on TikTok in which the screen was made to look like an incoming phone call — specifically, a call from John Pork. The “call screen” showed his unmistakable pig face, complete with the ringing interface, the accept and decline buttons, and the tension of a decision: do you pick up, or do you swipe to reject the pigman?

The trend exploded thanks to an easily copied CapCut template, which let anyone recreate the “John Pork is calling” screen in seconds. One widely credited early video, posted in late March 2023, racked up millions of views within days and sent the concept into the meme stratosphere. Before long, the hashtag #johnpork had accumulated hundreds of millions of views across TikTok, with reports putting the figure at over 900 million.

The genius of the format was its flexibility. “John Pork is calling” wasn’t a joke with a single punchline — it was a template. Creators used the incoming-call gag as a setup for endless variations: comedic skits, reaction videos, fake-out pranks, and dramatic mini-stories about what might happen if you actually answered.

Why Is John Pork Calling You?

This is the question at the heart of the meme, and the honest answer is: nobody really knows, and that’s the point.

The “John Pork is calling” format works because it’s ominous and absurd at the same time. There’s a low-key sense of dread to a mysterious pigman ringing your phone — should you answer? What does he want? What happens if you do? The meme deliberately leaves that ambiguous, and different creators filled in the blank with their own imaginations. Some framed answering the call as leading to strange or funny outcomes; others treated it as a test, a dare, or the start of a horror-comedy bit.

The character’s own creator has described the original calling trend as fantastic and amusing, noting that it started with TikTok users claiming they’d received a call from John Pork, and that answering often led to mysterious outcomes that sparked fan creativity. That open-endedness is exactly why the meme spread — it handed people a framework and let them run in every direction.

The “Death” of John Pork

One of the most fascinating turns in the John Pork saga is the widely shared story that he “died” — a piece of meme lore that was entirely fictional but that huge numbers of people played along with.

As the calling meme evolved, a narrative emerged across TikTok: John Pork had been calling everyone desperately, and because nobody ever answered his calls, he died. This spawned a whole second wave of content — mournful tribute videos, fake news reports, and captions expressing regret along the lines of “I should have picked up his calls.”

It was collective, participatory storytelling. The audience took a simple meme and built a tragic emotional arc on top of it, complete with guilt, grief, and a moral about the consequences of ignoring the pigman. The character’s creator later reflected on this offshoot with amusement, pointing out that many people genuinely thought John was calling for help — and confirming, for the record, that John Pork was very much still “alive” and that the original accounts stayed active through late 2023.

That’s the thing about a meme like this: it can die and live again purely at the whim of the internet, and neither state is more “real” than the other.

The John Pork Extended Universe

Like any successful character, John Pork eventually spawned spin-offs and relatives. The most notable is Lola Pork, positioned as his sister — another pig-human hybrid who first appeared in a YouTube video in August 2023 and picked up her own social-media presence. The emergence of a “Pork family” showed how the concept had grown beyond a single face into a small shared universe that fans and creators could expand.

Beyond family members, John Pork’s popularity generated a wider ecosystem: merchandise, memory-book-style accounts, fan art, remixes, and countless derivative “[character] is calling” memes that borrowed his format and swapped in other absurd figures. The pig-man had become a template not just for videos, but for an entire style of internet humor.

The Technoblade Rumor

No account of John Pork is complete without one of the internet’s more bizarre theories. For a stretch, a corner of Reddit became convinced — as a joke — that John Pork was secretly the “real face” of Technoblade, the wildly popular Minecraft YouTuber known for always appearing as an anonymous crowned-pig avatar.

The connection was pure meme logic: Technoblade’s online persona was a pig, John Pork was a pig-man, therefore they must be the same being. It was never meant to be taken seriously, but it’s a perfect example of how John Pork slotted into pre-existing internet culture and became a canvas for layered in-jokes.

Why Did John Pork Become So Popular?

There’s no single formula for going viral, but John Pork checks nearly every box for meme success:

He’s uncanny. The combination of a hyperrealistic pig head on a completely normal human body sits right in the sweet spot of “unsettling but hilarious.” Your brain can’t quite categorize him, and that friction is funny.

He’s a template, not a punchline. The strongest memes give people a structure to build on rather than a joke that gets old after one viewing. “John Pork is calling” is endlessly remixable, which is why it kept generating new content for months.

He’s low-effort to recreate. Thanks to CapCut templates and easily copied formats, anyone could make a John Pork video in minutes. Low barrier to entry equals massive volume of content equals virality.

He tells a story. The fake death, the desperate calls, the guilt of not answering, the sister, the return — fans could invest in an ongoing narrative, which is far stickier than a static image.

He’s absurd in a wholesome way. John Pork is weird, but he’s not offensive or mean-spirited. He’s just a strange little guy who wants you to pick up the phone. That approachability made him easy to embrace.

John Pork’s Lasting Legacy and Recent Resurgence

Memes are famously short-lived, but John Pork has proven unusually durable. Long after the initial 2023 explosion, he has continued to resurface, with renewed waves of interest keeping the pig-man in circulation and introducing him to audiences who missed the first round.

That staying power says something about the character’s design. He isn’t tied to a single trending sound or a fleeting news event; he’s a flexible, evergreen absurdity that any creator can pull off the shelf whenever they need a hit of surreal comedy. Each new wave adds fresh layers to the lore, and each generation of internet users seems to discover him and make him their own.

In that sense, John Pork has graduated from “a meme” to something closer to a permanent fixture of internet folklore — a shared reference point that people recognize instantly, the way older internet cultures rallied around characters that long outlived their original viral moment.

Frequently Asked Questions About John Pork

Is John Pork a real person? No. John Pork is a virtual influencer — a fictional, digitally created character with the body of a human and the head of a pig. There’s no real human “playing” him in the traditional sense; he’s a crafted online persona.

Where is John Pork from? In his fictional backstory, John Pork is presented as being from Palermo, Italy, where he began posting as a fashion model and lifestyle influencer.

When did John Pork first appear? He debuted on Instagram in 2018 under the handle @john.pork, several years before he became a mainstream meme.

What is the “John Pork is calling” meme? It’s a video format that went viral on TikTok in March 2023, in which the screen mimics an incoming phone call from John Pork. Viewers had to “decide” whether to answer the mysterious pigman, and the ambiguous, slightly ominous setup inspired endless creative variations.

Did John Pork die? No — that’s a fictional meme storyline. A popular narrative claimed John Pork died because no one answered his calls, sparking tribute videos and mock grief. His creator confirmed the character was never actually “gone,” and it was all part of the fun.

Who is Lola Pork? Lola Pork is a spin-off character presented as John Pork’s sister — another pig-human hybrid who emerged in 2023 with her own social-media presence, expanding the John Pork universe.

The Bottom Line

John Pork is proof that the internet’s sense of humor can turn almost anything into a phenomenon — even a fashion-model pig from Italy who won’t stop calling your phone. He started as a quirky 2018 experiment in virtual influencing, became a global meme in 2023, “died” and came back, spawned a family, and refuses to fully fade away.

So the next time your screen lights up with that unmistakable pig face and the words “John Pork is calling,” you’ll know exactly who’s on the line. Whether you pick up is entirely up to you.

The post Who Is John Pork? The Viral Pig-Man Meme Explained appeared first on Cream.

• Ariana Grande, 32, released “Hate That I Made You Love Me” on May 29 — the lead single from her upcoming eighth studio album Petal, due July 31 via Republic Records — co-written and produced by Grande alongside longtime collaborators Ilya and Max Martin
• The mid-tempo song carries a dual meaning: on the surface it reads as a breakup track about a lost love who felt more invested than she did, but the bridge expands into a meditation on fame and the expectations placed on women in the public eye — “Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts on your own accord?” she sings
• An official music video directed by Christian Breslauer — who helmed Grande’s MTV VMA-winning Bright Days Ahead short film in 2025 — premieres Monday, June 1 at 8 a.m. PST; a teaser featuring Weapons actor Justin Long dropped earlier this week
• Petal is described by Grande as “little feral” and “from a place I’ve been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before” — the 12-track album was executive produced and co-written by Grande and Ilya, who has worked with her since her 2014 breakout single “Problem”

Ariana Grande has officially opened a new chapter. “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” the lead single from her forthcoming eighth studio album Petal, arrived Friday, May 29 — and with it, the clearest signal yet of where the 32-year-old is heading musically and emotionally after two years of high-profile film projects, a divorce, and a seven-year gap between major tours. The song is built around a shimmering, ambient instrumental, Grande’s voice in a quieter register than much of her previous work, and a premise that sounds like an apology but isn’t really one, per Rolling Stone.

“Hate that I made you love me / Sorry if I made me your type / Yeah, I hate that I made you love me / ‘Cause I barely tried,” she sings in the chorus. The song was co-written and produced by Grande alongside Ilya and Max Martin — the same Swedish production team behind many of her biggest records. It arrives with a comic-book-inspired lyric video and is listed as the second track on Petal. It’s also Grande’s first non-soundtrack single since 2025’s “Twilight Zone,” per Billboard.

Speculation about who the song is directed at began immediately. Just Jared noted that on Eternal Sunshine, Grande sang about how hard she worked to sustain a relationship — and that this song flips that script entirely, with the narrator claiming she “barely tried.” Some fans have drawn a connection to her divorce from Dalton Gomez. Others read the song as addressing something bigger: the experience of being a public figure whose image becomes a projection screen for everyone who encounters it. Grande doesn’t resolve the ambiguity, and that seems intentional, per Just Jared.

The Bridge Changes Everything

The element of the song that has generated the most conversation is the bridge, which pivots away from the romantic framing entirely. “I felt your projections when you felt so insecure / Tell me why is it this way, why you so hate to see women endure / Is it really my fault you all gave me your hearts on your own accord / I don’t really think so,” she sings. ELLE’s analysis of the lyrics noted that the bridge transforms what appears to be a breakup song into something more pointed — an address to the audience itself, to fans and critics alike who have assigned their own meanings to Grande’s persona over the years. That reading fits with what Grande has said about Petal more broadly: it’s an album going somewhere she hasn’t let herself go before, per ELLE.

The closing lines — “I know that I will find my way from you / Like flowers from a tomb while you decide who you are” — land as both a breakup sign-off and a statement of self-possession. The album title suddenly makes more sense. Petal: something that pushes through, fragile and insistent at once, per Pitchfork.

What We Know About Petal

Grande first announced Petal via Instagram on April 28, describing the 12-track set as “little feral.” “It’s definitely from a place I’ve been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before,” she said in a video. “This kind of just feels like something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.” The album is the follow-up to Eternal Sunshine — her Grammy-winning 2024 record — and is executive produced and co-written by Grande and Ilya. Ilya, the Swedish producer behind some of the biggest pop records of the past decade, has been Grande’s closest studio collaborator since “Problem” put her at the top of the charts in 2014. His fingerprints are audible throughout “Hate That I Made You Love Me” — the production is controlled, precise, and built to let Grande’s voice carry the emotional weight, per Variety.

The Music Video and the Tour

Before the single even dropped, Grande had already teased the official music video with a clip featuring Justin Long — the actor currently in Weapons — peering into a car’s rearview mirror as a trap-adjacent beat builds, only to see Grande’s eyes staring back at him. The teaser’s visual language, Billboard noted, evokes the poster design of the 1986 thriller The Hitcher. The full video, directed by Christian Breslauer — who also directed the MTV VMA-winning Bright Days Ahead short film for Grande in 2025 — premieres June 1 at 8 a.m. PST. Long’s appearance continues what Billboard described as Grande’s longstanding tradition of casting recognizable actors in her visual projects, per Billboard.

The single arrives just as Grande is about to head back on the road. Her Eternal Sunshine concert tour — her first major tour in seven years — kicks off in June, meaning fans will be hearing these new songs live almost immediately after they land. Petal drops July 31, squarely in the middle of the touring run. The timing is deliberate: Grande is not easing into this era. She’s releasing the music while she’s in front of the biggest live audiences of her career, and “Hate That I Made You Love Me” is the opening argument.

The post Ariana Grande Launches the ‘Petal’ Era With New Single ‘Hate That I Made You Love Me’ — Here’s What the Lyrics Mean appeared first on Cream.

• Candace Cameron Bure, 50, is officially becoming a grandmother of two: her son Lev Bure, 26, and his wife Elliott announced they are expecting their first child together on May 28, just weeks after Candace’s daughter Natasha Bure Perry revealed her own pregnancy
• Elliott shared the news on Instagram with a photo of herself and Lev holding an ultrasound, captioning it “baby bure coming soon!!!!!!” — Candace reposted it with “Another grandbaby on the way 🥹!!!!! Does life get any better?!!”
• Daughter Natasha, 27, had tried to keep her pregnancy secret during a recent family trip but said her symptoms “were so rough” that hiding it became impossible; she and husband Bradley Steven Perry, also 27, broke the news during that visit
• Candace — the Full House alum who is also married to former NHL player Valeri Bure, 51 — will be “CandyGram x2,” as she put it in her Instagram reaction

It has been a big few weeks to be Candace Cameron Bure. The Full House alum, 50, found out she was getting her first grandchild when daughter Natasha Bure Perry — who is married to actor Bradley Steven Perry — revealed her pregnancy. And then, before that news had even fully settled, her son Lev Bure and his wife Elliott made it a twofer.

Elliott announced the pregnancy on Instagram May 28, posting photos of herself and Lev, 26, holding an ultrasound image. Her caption: “baby bure coming soon!!!!!!” Candace reposted the announcement with characteristic enthusiasm: “Another grandbaby on the way 🥹!!!!!” she wrote. “Does life get any better?!!! CandyGram x2 = fully ignited.” She added that she and Valeri were “still pinching ourselves,” per E! News.

Natasha’s Surprise Reveal

The back-to-back pregnancy announcements from two of her adult children make for an unusually full spring for the Bure family. Natasha, 27, had planned to stay quiet about her own pregnancy a little longer — but the timing didn’t cooperate. She explained on Instagram that she and Bradley Steven Perry “weren’t planning on telling my parents on this trip but right when we flew in, my symptoms were so rough and I didn’t think I’d be able to hide it for the whole weekend.” The secret became a celebration instead, per Us Magazine.

Lev’s pregnancy news arrived just days later. Candace is now tracking two due dates, and apparently leaning into it — her “CandyGram x2” caption suggests she has already picked out her grandmother name, per People.

The post Candace Cameron Bure Is Becoming a Grandmother Twice — Son Lev and Wife Elliott Are Expecting Weeks After Daughter Natasha’s Pregnancy News appeared first on Cream.

• Blake Lively, 38, posted a series of Instagram Stories on Wednesday, May 27, featuring a selfie with husband Ryan Reynolds, 49, followed by close-up shots of his arms set to Justin Bieber’s “Yummy” — captioning the selfie simply “delicious @vancityreynolds”
• In the original photo, Reynolds is holding a plate of cookies while wearing a white tank top; Lively then zoomed in on his biceps for what several outlets called a “thirst trap” directed at her own husband of 15 years
• The playful post arrives about three weeks after Lively’s legal dispute with It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios officially wrapped up on May 4

Fifteen years in, and Blake Lively is still posting thirst traps about her husband. On Wednesday, the actress shared an Instagram Stories sequence that started innocuously enough — a sunny outdoor selfie with Ryan Reynolds, who was holding a plate of cookies and raspberries in a white tank top — and then escalated.

“delicious @vancityreynolds,” she wrote over the photo. What followed, per Page Six, were close-up shots of Reynolds’ arms, soundtracked by Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.” The internet got the message.

Reynolds, 49, did not appear to respond publicly, which tracks. The couple, who married in 2012 and have four children together, built much of their early public persona on mutual Instagram trolling — each going out of their way to post unflattering photos of the other. The “delicious” era appears to represent a different approach, per Just Jared.

The Post-Lawsuit Chapter

The timing is notable. Lively’s highly publicized legal dispute with her It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni, filed in December 2024, was officially resolved on May 4. The settlement terms were not disclosed. The cookies-and-biceps post landed roughly three weeks later — part of what looks, from the outside, like a deliberate return to normal, per Us Magazine.

The post Blake Lively Called Ryan Reynolds ‘Delicious’ on Instagram — Then Went in on His Arms Set to Justin Bieber’s ‘Yummy’ appeared first on Cream.

• Dennis Quaid, 72, filed a petition on May 22 to terminate $13,750 per month in child support to ex-wife Kimberly Buffington, 54 — the payments cover their 18-year-old twins, Zoe and Thomas, who are graduating high school this spring
• Daughter Zoe graduated on May 23; son Thomas’s graduation is June 3; Quaid’s filing argues the support should end on each child’s respective graduation date, consistent with the terms of his 2018 divorce agreement with Buffington
• The divorce agreement states that payments end “when a child completes 12th grade” — Quaid’s petition is framing the move as a straightforward application of that clause rather than a modification of the original order
• In addition to the base $13,750 monthly payment, Quaid is required to pay additional amounts when his income exceeds a certain threshold

Dennis Quaid is heading to court — not for a movie role, but to formally close out a chapter of his post-divorce finances. The actor, 72, filed a petition on May 22 to terminate $13,750 per month in child support payments to his ex-wife Kimberly Buffington, 54, now that their twins are graduating high school, per USA Today.

Quaid and Buffington’s daughter Zoe, 18, crossed the graduation stage on May 23. Her twin brother Thomas is set to graduate June 3. Under the couple’s 2018 divorce agreement, child support payments are structured to end “when a child completes 12th grade” — and Quaid’s petition asks the court to recognize that milestone for each twin on their respective graduation dates.

Beyond the flat monthly figure, Quaid has also been on the hook for additional payments tied to his income — an arrangement common in high-earner divorce settlements that scales support with what the paying parent actually brings in. Per TMZ, Quaid’s filing is asking the court to terminate both the base support and the income-contingent top-up as the twins age out of the agreement’s terms.

Quaid and Buffington, who married in 2004, finalized their divorce in 2018 after several years of legal proceedings. The twins are their only children together.

The post Dennis Quaid Goes to Court to End $13,750 Monthly Child Support as His Twins Finish High School appeared first on Cream.

• Ray J, 45, was knocked unconscious in the second round of his celebrity MMA match against YouTuber Supa Hot Fire (DeWayne Stevenson) at Adin Ross’s Brand Risk event at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on May 23; he was admitted to a Las Vegas hospital that night and remained there for several days
• Brand Risk launched an investigation into whether the fight was “prearranged” after Supa Hot Fire refused to throw punches in the first round before stopping Ray J in the second; Ray J categorically denies any rigging, saying there is “no way” he orchestrated the loss
• From his hospital bed, Ray J went live and directed a public message at Adin Ross — the specifics of which he addressed while hooked up to monitors, bare-chested, in a video shared widely online
• Ray J has ongoing heart health concerns — he previously stated he had months to live due to a heart condition — adding to the alarm when he was knocked out and hospitalized; doctors ran tests to assess whether the knockout worsened his condition
• He has since been discharged; his scheduled May 29 performance in San Jose has been rescheduled to June

Ray J stepped into the cage on May 23 and stepped out on a stretcher. What followed — three days in a Las Vegas hospital, a live video from his bed, a fight-rigging investigation, and a public callout of the streamer who put the event together — turned a celebrity MMA match into something considerably messier.

The fight took place at the UFC Apex as part of Brand Risk, a celebrity combat event organized by popular streamer Adin Ross. Ray J faced YouTuber Supa Hot Fire, whose real name is DeWayne Stevenson. Per TMZ, Ray J came out aggressively in the opening round, but Stevenson took control in round two and finished him with a second-round stoppage. Ray J was knocked unconscious and admitted to a Las Vegas hospital later that night.

TMZ obtained photos of Ray J in the hospital — bare-chested, monitors attached, lying in bed. Sources told the outlet he had been hospitalized for three days at the time of their initial report. His pre-existing heart condition, which he has publicly disclosed — at one point saying he had months to live — heightened concern about the knockout. Doctors ran tests to determine whether the fight had worsened his cardiac situation.

The Rigging Allegation — and His Response

Before the discharge, things got stranger. Brand Risk announced it was investigating whether the fight had been “prearranged,” pointing to what they described as suspicious behavior — specifically, Supa Hot Fire’s decision to avoid throwing punches in the first round. Ray J, still in the hospital, pushed back hard. He told TMZ there is “no way” he rigged the fight, dismissing the allegation entirely.

He then went live from his hospital bed, where he had a public message for Adin Ross. The full contents of that live stream circulated widely online. E! Online reported he wrote “Getting better” on an Instagram Story on May 27 and told his followers he’d see them “on Friday” — a reference to a scheduled May 29 performance at the Pete Be Center in San Jose, California. Per E! Online, that show has since been rescheduled to June after venue owner Pete Be spoke with Ray J directly. He has since been discharged from the hospital.

The post Ray J Discharged From Hospital After MMA Knockout — But Not Before Going Live From His Bed to Call Out Adin Ross appeared first on Cream.

• Carmen Electra, 54, appeared on the Legally Goff podcast and described the moment she decided to end her marriage to Dennis Rodman: she looked in the mirror in her 20s and didn’t recognize herself — bags under her eyes, puffy face, from constant partying
• Electra and Rodman, 65, married at the Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas in November 1998; Rodman sought an annulment nine days later; they briefly reconciled before she filed for divorce in April 1999
• "It was constant drinking," she said; a friend’s self-help book helped her see clearly: "I’ve got to get away from him because what good is going to come out of this?"
• After the split, Rodman would show up at her home and refuse to leave — threatening to "get naked again outside" — forcing her to move and change her number
• Despite it all: "It was real love. It wasn’t a made-up story. It wasn’t a publicity stunt. It was real love… it’s sad but it had to end"

Carmen Electra has talked about Dennis Rodman many times over the years. On the Legally Goff podcast this week, she went further than usual — down to the specific mirror moment when she decided enough was enough.

"I just remember looking at myself in the mirror," Electra, 54, told the podcast. "I was at home and I didn’t recognize myself. I had bags under my eyes. My face was puffy. I’m in my 20s! I thought, ‘It’s got to stop. It has to stop.’"

The two had one of the most-covered celebrity relationships of the late 1990s. They met at a club, got serious fast, and in November 1998 married at the Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas. Per Page Six, Rodman sought an annulment just nine days after the wedding. They reconciled briefly before Electra filed for divorce in April 1999.

Looking back, she describes life in Rodman’s orbit as genuinely fun — and genuinely unsustainable. "[Dennis] was always like the pied piper of the party," she said. "We had a lot of fun together. That was my favorite part of being around Dennis." But the other side of it: "He’s so loving, and then he’s wild and he’s drinking. It was just too hard to continue to keep up with him and his friends. It was constant drinking."

What helped her get out was a book — literally. A friend handed her a self-help book around the time she hit her breaking point, and she kept going back to the store for more. "I just thought, ‘I’ve got to get away from him because what good is going to come out of this?’"

After the Split

The breakup wasn’t clean. Per Us Weekly, Electra said Rodman would come to her house and not leave. He would "threaten to get naked again outside," she recalled. "I just didn’t want the police to come. I didn’t want it to turn into a big thing." Eventually, she had to move and change her phone number to create real distance.

On the softer side of those same months: she said Rodman would sometimes show up "being really sweet and cute and crying" and wanting her back. She returned the things he gave her after the split — but kept what he had given her while they were together.

Now, more than 25 years later, the view is clear-eyed and fond. "It was real love," Electra said. "It wasn’t a made-up story. It wasn’t a publicity stunt. It was real love. It’s sad but it had to end."

The post Carmen Electra Says She Didn’t Recognize Herself in the Mirror During Her Dennis Rodman Marriage — and That Was the Moment appeared first on Cream.

• In a new Variety cover story, Cynthia Erivo, 39, speaks candidly about the November 2025 incident at the Wicked: For Good Singapore premiere, when she pushed away a man who had jumped a barricade and grabbed Ariana Grande — Jonathan Wen was subsequently jailed for nine days and banned from Singapore
• The viral aftermath — memes and TikTok videos casting Erivo as Grande’s "bodyguard" — left her feeling her humanity was "bastardized": "It was my physique; it was my shape; it was the fact that I was bald; it was about what I looked like," she says
• "I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women," Erivo says; "I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around"
• She says the experience killed her motivation to campaign for a second Best Actress Oscar nomination for Wicked: For Good, which was ultimately shut out of the 2026 Academy Awards entirely
• On a possible Wicked 3: "It’s too soon to even begin to have the conversation about it. It would take a lot to get me back to do it. It has to make sense"; she and Grande still text almost every day

Cynthia Erivo has spent months sitting with what happened in Singapore, and now she’s ready to say what she thinks it was really about.

In a Variety cover story published Wednesday, Erivo gives her most detailed account of the November 2025 incident at the Wicked: For Good Singapore premiere — and goes further, connecting the viral fallout to something she says the public hasn’t wanted to confront. At the event, a man named Jonathan Wen vaulted over a barricade and grabbed Ariana Grande on the red carpet. Erivo stepped in immediately.

"Nobody moved. Nobody moved," she recalls. "So I moved because my brain went, ‘Get him away! Get him out of here!’ My immediate reaction was ‘Get him away from us.’ And what people couldn’t see is that he wouldn’t let go [of Grande]. He wouldn’t let go. So I just kept pushing at him to get him off." Wen was jailed for nine days and banned from Singapore for the incident.

Most coverage praised her instincts. But a parallel narrative ran alongside it: memes, jokes, and TikTok videos casting Erivo as Grande’s "bodyguard" — playing on the physical contrast between the two women. Erivo is direct about what she saw in those videos.

"I think that we haven’t really come to terms with the insidious nature of how we view Black women," she tells Variety. "And I’m sure people will read this and think, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s not about that.’ But it is. Because that’s what was being made fun of. It was my physique; it was my shape; it was the fact that I was bald; it was about what I looked like. And because of that, there was this assumption that I was bigger than my co-star and so I had to be controlling or protecting, and that was my role. I would hazard a guess that it would not have been the same had it been the other way around."

How It Affected the Oscars

Erivo says the incident and its aftermath took the wind out of her willingness to campaign for a Best Actress nomination for Wicked: For Good. She had already received a nomination for the first film; the sequel, which completed the $1.2 billion two-film franchise, received no Oscar nominations at all.

"I just felt like my humanity had been bastardized," she says. "I felt like something I did instinctively had been made to be something that it simply was not because of the way people see women who look like me, and because of the assumptions that are made, and I just didn’t want to be a part of that, really and truly. I didn’t want to put myself through it. I didn’t feel like I deserved it."

She adds that the season was already colored by what she perceived as a "sort of upturned nose at the second installment, even though we all knew there was a second film coming and we were just doing our jobs." Per Us Weekly, Erivo also noted the toll of the Oscar campaign window itself: "If it was a shorter stint of time, there is less potential for things to turn sour, and also there’s more energy to keep it going."

On her friendship with Grande, she says it has survived everything. "I think that people didn’t really believe that we were actually friends," she says. "But that’s also because people don’t know me very well. If I’m a friend, then I’m a friend. If I’m not, then I’m not." The two still text almost every day.

What Comes Next

Erivo is currently starring in Dracula, a one-woman show at the Noël Coward Theatre in London in which she plays 23 characters and delivers roughly 20,000 words of dialogue over two hours. She’s also announced her next film role: The Road Home, in which she’ll play South African singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba.

The roles she’s dreaming about after that? A monster for Guillermo del Toro, and Storm from the X-Men, which she calls "a childhood fantasy of mine."

As for Wicked 3: "It’s too soon to even begin to have the conversation about it," she says. "It would take a lot to get me back to do it. It has to make sense."

The post Cynthia Erivo Says the ‘Bodyguard’ Memes After She Protected Ariana Grande Were About Race — and They Killed Her Oscar Drive appeared first on Cream.

• Gayle King appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast and described the moment she caught ex-husband William Bumpus cheating on her with a close friend — she returned home early from a trip to find her friend “cowering behind the door in my towel”
• Bumpus, who was married to King from 1982 to 1993, responded to Page Six with a statement acknowledging “the pain I caused decades ago” and extending apologies to King, their two children, their children’s spouses, and their three grandchildren
• He also credited King for supporting him through Yale Law School and for their successful co-parenting: “The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years”
• King has described calling Oprah Winfrey immediately after discovering the affair — Winfrey stayed on the phone with her for two hours, eventually telling her flatly: “No, he ain’t changed”

William Bumpus has said publicly what he apparently hasn’t said enough in private: he’s sorry.

The statement came Wednesday, hours after Gayle King described the end of their marriage on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. In the episode, King, 71, told the story of returning home early from a trip — her flight had been canceled — and finding Bumpus in their Connecticut home with one of her close married friends. The alarm was set, which struck her as unusual. Her husband came out of the bedroom in a towel and told her she couldn’t come in. Then she found the other woman.

“I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this. I can’t believe that you are doing this,” King said she told the woman. “And I even said, ‘I thought we were friends!’ It sounded so pitiful.”

The detail that landed: when King came through the door, her children were with her. She had their nanny take them while she dealt with what she was seeing.

What Bumpus Said

Bumpus sent a statement to Page Six Wednesday in response. The statement was extensive.

“My deepest apologies to Gayle, to our daughter Kirby and her husband, Virgil, to our son William and his wife, Elise, and to our three grandchildren, for the pain I caused decades ago,” Bumpus wrote. “Those actions were mine.”

He acknowledged that King “has every right to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly forty years ago,” adding: “I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it.”

Then, notably, he went further. “I remain endlessly grateful to Gayle. She gave me two of the greatest gifts of my life — our daughter Kirby and our son William. It was Gayle who encouraged and supported me through getting my Yale Law degree. And it was Gayle who chose, with me, to co-parent successfully from the very beginning — a testament to our shared commitment to our children above all else, and now our grandchildren. The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years.”

What Oprah Said

On the podcast, King described calling Winfrey immediately after discovering the affair. The two stayed on the phone for about two hours. Winfrey was the only person King told — she didn’t tell her mother, didn’t tell her three sisters, nothing.

“I called Oprah. Oprah goes, ‘Wait, let me get this straight. He left you there alone and went with her?'” King recalled. “She said, ‘Oh, girl, you don’t even know how bad this is.'”

King said she eventually considered reconciling with Bumpus. Winfrey had a clear view on that: “No, he ain’t changed.” When King kept resisting, Winfrey’s patience ran out. “She got so sick of hearing it,” King said. “She goes, ‘Please go back with him. Please. I will drive the moving van. Please!’ That’s when you realize you’re telling people too much.”

King and Bumpus divorced in 1993. She told Cooper she has never remarried, and knows what she’s looking for: “You want somebody who lifts you up. You want somebody who’s proud of you. You want somebody who thinks, ‘God, I think it’s great being with you.’ I’m looking for him.”

The post Gayle King’s Ex-Husband Just Publicly Apologized — After She Described Walking In on Him appeared first on Cream.

• Gayle King, 71, appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper on May 27 and addressed the decades-old rumors that she and Oprah Winfrey are secretly in a lesbian relationship
• King said the speculation “used to really bother” her — especially after the National Enquirer ran a story claiming it was the reason her marriage ended
• Her response: “If we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man.”
• King wanted Oprah to publicly shut the rumors down; Oprah told her to “leave it alone” — a rare point of tension in their 50-year friendship
• King also revealed how Oprah supported her through her divorce after discovering her husband William Bumpus had cheated on her

Gayle King has addressed the Oprah rumors before. But on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy, she went further than usual — including the part where she and Oprah actually disagreed about what to do.

Sitting down with host Alex Cooper, King, 71, was asked directly how it felt to have spent decades fielding speculation that she and Oprah Winfrey, her best friend of over 50 years, are secretly in a romantic relationship. Her answer was candid and a little funny and a little pointed all at once.

“It used to really bother me,” King said. “I was recently divorced, and there was — the National Enquirer did a story about ‘that’s the reason for the divorce, because they’re secretly gay.'”

She set the record straight with characteristic directness: “Number one, if we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man. I prefer a man.”

The Disagreement They Don’t Talk About Much

The more revealing part of the conversation was what King said about her and Oprah’s different approaches to handling the rumors. King wanted Oprah to address them publicly. Oprah refused.

“I would say to her, ‘You’ve got to say something on your show, because it’s hard enough for me to get a date on a Saturday night and now people think I’m a lesbian, you’ve gotta say something,'” King recalled. But Oprah’s answer was firm: leave it alone.

That was a real moment of friction in a friendship that is famously tight. King’s frustration was legitimate — she was the one navigating a public divorce while the tabloids ran stories about her sexuality. Oprah’s calculation, apparently, was that responding only adds fuel. They each had a point. Oprah won.

Bossip noted that King admitted she never saw herself in Oprah’s shadow during all of this. “I always say I see myself in her light,” King said. “And I do mean that. I have never, not once thought, ‘God, I wish I could be her.'” She went on to describe how different they actually are at their core: “I love people, I love lights, camera, action. And Oprah’s very fine sitting at home with a book.”

The Divorce, and What Oprah Said

King also opened up on the podcast about the end of her marriage to William Bumpus, and how Oprah helped her through it. The TODAY segment on the interview highlighted the eight words Oprah told her after she discovered Bumpus had been unfaithful — King’s account of Oprah’s support in that moment was one of the more personal things she shared in the episode.

It’s the kind of friendship that makes sense when you hear her describe it. Not frictionless, not without the occasional disagreement over how to handle a tabloid story. But 50 years deep and apparently still the thing she leans on when everything else gets hard.

The Call Her Daddy episode is out now.

The post Gayle King on the Oprah Rumors: ‘If We Were Gay, We Would Tell You’ appeared first on Cream.