Fall TV Blog

A second season of Gone Country has been announced, with an eclectic cast ready to try their hand at country music — which they did Wednesday at Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon when the stars debuted songs they’d written, in front of several hundred family, friends and fans.

It wasn’t an easy process: ’80s diva Irene Cara dropped out after deciding the competition wasn’t for her. The remaining cast members include Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), Chris Kirkpatrick (’N Sync), Mikalah Gordon (American Idol), Jermaine Jackson, Lorenzo Lamas and Sean Young.

So how did they do? Well, these stars clearly know how to put on a show. Young wore tight blue jeans, a red blouse and a black bolero as she sang an upbeat song entitled “It’s Time (For the Boy to Grow Up).” Jackson went the ballad route, singing “Loving You Is the Natural Thing to Do,” inspired by his fourth wife, Halima Rashid. (Extra style points for Jackson, who had his first name embroidered across the groin of his blue jeans.) Lorenzo Lamas got the women in the audience going as he flung his Manuel couture jacket across the stage, exposing his biceps under his white T-shirt.

The prize for most promising, however, goes to Gordon, who competed on Idol against Carrie Underwood in Season Four. The Nashville-ready song? “You’re Ugly When You’re Drunk.”

The series begins in August. –Steve Helling, with reporting by Kay West

Ron Jaffe/CMT

After having her personal life splayed across the public arena, Denise Richards isn’t ready to put up any guards. In fact, she’s projecting her life as a single, working mom in Hollywood on to the small screen with a new E! reality show that is co-executive produced by friend Ryan Seacrest.

“I made a commitment to do this show, and I want it to be as real as possible — and that’s what it is,” she told PEOPLE Saturday at The Wiggles Live concert at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live. “Everyone has a perception of me, and I’m hoping that people will get to see my life and I think I relate to a lot of people.”

Richards points to being a mom, going through a “difficult” divorce with ex-husband Charlie Sheen and losing her mother to cancer as aspects of her life that audiences will relate to.

“See what it’s like to be a single mom raising two daughters and juggling a career … And just recently my dad moved into my house, so it’s balancing all of that. For me it’s the greatest job. I’m having so much fun!” (more…)

She’s happy with boyfriend Benji Madden, but Paris Hilton is looking for a new best friend.

Slated to start shooting in May, the heiress, 27, has paired up with MTV to search for a sidekick on a reality show tentatively called Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.

So, what does her current BFF, Nicole Richie, think? “Nicole is my best friend and my sister, so she understands — she’s at home with her baby,” Hilton told PEOPLE at the Hollywood Hills party to announce the series.

While Hilton contends “there’s nothing that’s really hard” about being her best friend, she’s going to take the decision very seriously. “I going to be in my element in Los Angeles and really showing these women my life, which is completely different than The Simple Life.”

Contestants will live in a house with Hilton and she will teach them how to be her best friend, leading them through competitions of loyalty, endurance and “girl politics,” eliminating them one by one.

As for what she’s looking to get out of the 20 contestants, she says, “Someone that I just trust and not someone who’s going to stab me in the back — it’s happened a lot in this town. Just someone I can have fun with, someone who could be like my sister.”

Aspiring contestants apply over the phone or on the Web site www.parisbff.com. – Scott Huver

Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage

CMT’s reality show Gone Country crowned its winner Friday night — and sorry Bobby Brown, it wasn’t you.

In spite of tough competition from Brown, rocker Dee Snider and erstwhile Marcia Brady Maureen McCormick, the big winner was dark-horse candidate Julio Iglesias, Jr. Host John Rich (the “Rich” half of country superduo Big & Rich) gave props to all seven aspiring hillbillies, but Iglesias was deemed to be the candidate who truly proved his country cred.

During the grand finale, filmed at Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon, Iglesias made like a country crooner with a bilingual and hip-swaying performance of his self-penned song “The Way I Want You,” which had all the ladies swooning. (See his semi-shirtless music video here.) His sex appeal — which trumped his vocal chops — was something Rich noted when he handed a custom-made diamond encrusted ring branded with the Gone Country logo to an emotional (and obviously shocked) Iglesias.

Carnie Wilson, not shy in expressing her opinion, observed, “No one expected Julio to win! Not even Julio!” Immediately after getting the promise ring from Rich, Julio threw his belongings into a van and presumably headed to Music Row to record the tune for country radio.
–Kay West

Orlando Garcia/jpi

Bobby Brown spent two weeks outside of Nashville, but does that make him country enough for John Rich, one half of Music City’s super duo Big & Rich and host of the CMT reality show Gone Country?

Brown, along with Carnie Wilson, Dee Snider, Diana DeGarmo, Julio Iglesias Jr., Sisqo and Maureen McCormack were challenged to immerse themselves in the “country lifestyle” — think fried chicken and guitar pickin’ — in order to write and perform a country song that will win one of them the opportunity to record and release their own twanged-up tune.

On the show’s finale, airing 8 p.m. ET Friday, March 7, each act takes the stage of the Wildhorse Saloon in downtown Nashville, vying for pure country certification. Perhaps inspired by a head-bowing pre-show prayer from Rich’s preacher father, Brown — dressed in black — raised his arms to the heavens, then dropped to his knees and crawled across the floor during an emotional performance of “The Man I’m Gonna Be.”

Back on two feet, Brown told his castmates that he was feeling good. “I felt like Top Cat. I’ve been through a lot and I wanted to let people know Bobby Brown is still standing.” When he’s not kneeling, of course.

The winning celebrity will be announced by Rich at the conclusion of the program.

–Kay West

Lindsay Lohan isn’t the only star in her family.

Her mom, Dina Lohan, is starring in a reality show, tentatively titled Living Lohan, E! officially announced Tuesday. Debuting this summer, the series will follow the Lohan matriarch as she juggles family life with business, attempting to launch 14-year-old daughter Ali’s entertainment career. Like her famous sister, Ali wants to sing and act – and plans to record songs at Las Vegas’ Palms Casino on the show.

The program will also focus on Lindsay’s 11-year-old brother Cody and Michael, 20, who is in college.

“The Lohans are one of the most intriguing families in the entertainment industry today,” Lisa Berger of E! said in a statement. “This is a family that knows how to roll with the punches and come out on top. Dina is an incredibly hard-working, passionate mom that I think our viewers will find both relatable and highly entertaining.”

While shooting has already begun, PEOPLE confirms that Dina and Ali will begin another round of filming March 17 in New York, followed by another two-week period in Las Vegas where Ali will hit up Maloof’s recording studio. – Brian Orloff
Tell us: Are you excited about the Lohan reality show? Will you watch? And
do you think Lindsay will make an appearance?

Brian Prahl/Splash News Online

After accidentally booking a business class ticket from Lithuania to Croatia (a violation of the the race rules), Azaria and Hendekea Azene were forced to miss the flight and unable to catch up to their competitors, causing them to become the sixth team to leave the Amazing Race. PEOPLE chatted with brother-sister duo to find out what exactly happened at Vilnius International Airport, who gets the prizes they won and what’s next for them. Did someone say modeling?

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As the mentor of Project Runway and the star of his own makeover show, Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, Tim Gunn is more than happy to help young designers and fashion-challenged women. But there’s one person he says he’s “obsessed” with the idea of getting a chance to work his magic on: Meryl Streep.

“I have the greatest respect for [her]. In fact I idolize her,” he told PEOPLE at the Emmett McCarthy EMc2 event. She “is enormously talented, enormously intelligent, beautiful, great figure, and just eschews fashion … I don’t know why she doesn’t want to get it, but she doesn’t! I really think that her disposition on it is ‘I’m too smart for it,’ but I want to say, ‘It’s not ephemeral. It’s not trivial. It is the semiology of clothing!’ She should get that.”

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Fielding questions once again about just how “real” her reality show is, Lauren Conrad admits some scenes on The Hills are re-enacted if MTV’s cameras happen to miss the original interactions.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Conrad, 21, specifically addresses “nail-polish-gate” — a sequence of scenes in one episode that were supposedly shot on one night, but in which Conrad’s red nail polish disappears over time. Conrad says the later scenes, with her on the phone with Brody Jenner, were indeed re-enacted the next day, because the cameras had stopped rolling before the “real” phone call.

“Anyone who has worked on a reality show knows how they’re filmed,” Conrad says. “I basically had to go and call [Brody] again, have the exact same conversation on camera. I mean, it’s not lying to anyone, it’s telling what really happened, but it’s just the way they film reality shows.”

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Do you have the talent to impress Sharon, Piers and The Hoff? Then get ready to get in line. America’s Got Talent will launch a nationwide open casting call in January to find contestants for its third season. NBC’s no. 1 summer series will hold auditions in several major cities across the country including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, Orlando, Atlanta and Dallas.

Last season’s winner, Terry Fator, a ventriloquist from Dallas, Texas, won a $1 million prize and a contract with the Las Vegas Hilton. He kicks off his Vegas act this Dec. 31 with a special New Year’s Eve performance.

Audition applications and details can be found at NBC. —Gerri Miller

Photo: Virginia Sherwood/NBC