Sylvester Stallone on Arnold Schwarzenegger, his family reality show and his growing ‘jacuzzi list’
In a career spanning more than five decades, Sylvester Stallone has taken on his first scripted TV role with new show Tulsa King.
And the star’s told Sky News he definitely found it different to making movies, admitting it was hard work at times.
“I’ve been around for centuries, actually, Julius Caesar was my first director,” Stallone joked.
Stallone (R) and Domenick Lombardozzi in Tulsa King. Pic: Brian Douglas/Paramount+
“No, I mean a long, long time – so can you handle probably over the season 400 pages of dialogue? No cue cards to do it? And that’s quite a challenge but I also find it to be invigorating too, when you can pull it off.
“That’s the hardest thing is there’s no life, you know what I mean? I now have sympathy for actors that work on streaming – I bought a motor home, I don’t think I’ve seen it yet!”
The 76-year-old had already been working for years when he rose to prominence playing Rocky Balboa in the 1976 boxing film of the same name, kicking off a franchise that is still around now with Creed 3 due out in March next year.
He says the secret of his longevity in the business is his attitude – which also led to his public rivalry-turned-friendship with fellow action star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I don’t know if it’s a kind of arrogance towards life in general and ‘this can’t be it, there’s always got to be something else around the corner’, and I just don’t like the word no,” Stallone said.
“I would say that I’m just, I’m built for challenge, and whenever someone goes like, ‘Hey, I’m the hardest working actor’, I go, ‘no, you’re not’ – that kind of thing.
“Like with Arnold, I literally manifested our antagonism – I liked it, and he liked it because it pushed him too, so we made ourselves like two great teams [who] hated each other, but you played better when you have that kind of [butts his hands together], it just taps into something.
“But I think the main motivation is getting out of the house – with three daughters and three female dogs I’m a dead duck.”
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The actor’s family are also motivating his next TV project – a reality show.
Stallone says it’s something he wanted to do for posterity.
“I’m doing a reality show because my life is bizarre,” he revealed.
“I have a wife and the dogs and the kids, and I think you know what? Let me do that, too. It’s kind of a [trip down] memory lane.
“You know you want to show them home movies? So the kids remember? I’d like to do something like that – it’s not about the money, I just want to do that for memory.”
After conquering Hollywood, and now turning his attention to TV, you may think Stallone might next be ready to consider retirement.
But instead, he says there’s still plenty more on his bucket list.
“Well, it’s actually a bathtub list, it’s getting bigger, it’s not even a bucket – that’s well, well gone.
“Yeah, we’re into this, like, jacuzzi list.”
In Tulsa King, his character is a mafia man sent to Tulsa, not somewhere usually associated with mob crime.
It’s a typical fish-out-of-water story, but while his character may be out of his comfort zone, it seems as long as Stallone is working, he’s very much in his.
Tulsa King launches on Paramount+ on Monday.
Davina McCall has said her short-term memory is “a bit remiss” as she recovers from brain tumour surgery.
Speaking from her bed, the visibly emotional TV presenter posted a short video updating her Instagram followers on her condition, saying it had been a “mad” time.
She expressed an “enormous heartfelt thank you” to people who had messaged her after she revealed this month she had a benign brain tumour, a colloid cyst, which she described as “very rare”.
Looking bright, but with a visibly bruised left eye, McCall said: “My short-term memory is a bit remiss.
“But that is something I can work on, so I’m really happy about that. I’m writing everything down, to keep myself feeling safe.”
She added: “It’s been mad, and it’s just really nice to be back home, I’m on the other side.”
In a message posted with the video, she reiterated her thanks for all the support she has received, adding: “Had a great night’s sleep in my own bed. Have a couple of sleeps during the day which keeps my brain clear… Slowly, slowly…”
When she first shared her diagnosis, she said chances of having it were “three in a million” and that she had discovered it several months previously after a company offered her a health scan in return for giving a menopause talk.
The 57-year-old star said support from her fans had “meant the world”.
She said she was being “brilliantly looked after” by her partner, hairdresser Michael Douglas, and her stepmother, Gabby, who she calls mum.
Becoming tearful, the presenter said: “I’d quickly like to say big up the stepmums. I don’t really say thank you to Gabby enough. She’s been an amazing rock my whole life.”
McCall was estranged from her birth mother, Florence McCall, who died in 2008.
McCall with 2002 Big Brother winner Kate Lawler. Pic: Rex Features
With a catch in her voice, McCall went on: “I’ve got a massive dose of vitamin G – I’m just really grateful. I’ve always been really lucky in my life, but I feel unbelievably grateful right now. So, thanks for everything, all of you.
“I’m on the mend, I’m resting and sleeping loads and I feel really good. I’m just very lucky.”
Stars including presenter Alison Hammond, singer Craig David and radio host Zoe Ball quickly shared their delight at the positive update.
McCall rose to fame presenting on MTV in the mid-1990s, and later on Channel 4’s Streetmate, before becoming a household name as the host of Big Brother from 2000 to 2010.
McCall with her MBE, alongside her partner Michael Douglas and her daughter Holly Robertson. Pic: PA
She’s gone on to present programmes across the networks, the most recent being ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad.
Last year, McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
Married twice, McCall has three children, two daughters and a son, with her second husband, presenter Matthew Robertson.
She has lived with Douglas since 2022, and they present a weekly lifestyle podcast together, Making The Cut.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, the bestselling novelist who wrote A Woman Of Substance, has died at the age of 91.
The Leeds-born author, who sold more than 90 million books, died peacefully at her home on Sunday after a short illness and was “surrounded by loved ones to the very end”, a spokeswoman said.
Taylor Bradford, who was often labelled “the grand dame of blockbusters”, hit the big time when A Woman Of Substance was published in 1979, making her an overnight success.
The story sold millions of copies and traced the journey of Emma Harte from life as a servant in rural Yorkshire to heading a business empire.
The rags to riches story was followed by many other successful books with the author’s works being published in more than 40 languages across 90 countries.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
The author on her 21st birthday. Pic: Bradford Enterprises/PA
Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of publisher HarperCollins, said the author was a “natural storyteller”, adding: “Barbara Taylor Bradford was a truly exceptional writer whose first book, the international bestseller A Woman Of Substance, changed the lives of so many who read it – and still does to this day.”
Taylor Bradford, who was made an OBE in 2007 for services to literature, wrote a total of 40 novels during her career – her most recent was The Wonder Of It All, published last year.
Pic: Caroll Taveras/Bradford Enterprises/PA
Taylor Bradford with her husband Robert in 1993. Pic: PA
Born in May 1933 as the only child of Winston and Freda Taylor, she worked as a typist for the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter and then the paper’s first woman’s editor.
At the age of 20, she moved to London and worked in Fleet Street for Woman’s Own and the London Evening News.
She met her husband, American film producer Robert Bradford, in 1961 and they married in London on Christmas Eve in 1963 before moving to New York the following year.
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The couple were married for 55 years until he died from a stroke in 2019.
Following a private funeral in New York, the author will be buried alongside her late husband at the city’s Westchester Hills Cemetery.
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