Beck/Smith Hollywood

John Rich

Don’t expect John Rich to rest on his laurels now that not only has he won “Celebrity Apprentice” — but broken the show’s fundraising records with $1.3 million donated to his charity, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

He and his pal and partner Big Kenny Alphin and Gretchen Wilson have a brand new video on the way — and they’ve got their Big & Rich tour to keep them busy all summer long.  “I’m really excited to be back on the road with Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson, and Cowboy Troy — the nucleus of the Music Mafia back together again,” he says.  “We’ve got great reports from fans around the country who are all pumped up to see us.”  Their “Xtreme Muzik” tour starts June 18.

The new song/video is “Fake ID,” which, he says, “is actually going to be featured in the new ‘Footloose’ movie with Julianne Hough.  It’s a huge choreographed dance number.  I’ve seen a sneak peek and it’s awesome,” he tells us of the feature due in October.

It’s been a busy three years since Big & Rich have been out touring together.  Rich explains, “Big Kenny kind of became a world traveler there for awhile, shooting documentaries.  I’ve been working with JaneDear and on ‘Shuttin Detroit Down,’ ‘Gone Country’ and ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’” he notes, ticking off some of his producing, solo recording, and TV activities.  “We had that breather, and then, Kenny reached out to me and said, ‘Hey man, I’m going to be back in town.  You want to do something?’  And I said, ‘Dude, I’ve been waiting on that call.’”

We’re used to stories of tough productions, but Academy Award-nominated documentarian Greg MacGillivray takes discomfort to a whole different level, having already taken IMAX cameras to the top of Mt. Everest and the bottom of the ocean.  MacGillivray’s new “Arabia 3D,” narrated by Helen Mirren, offered its own sort of brutal challenges, including “filming in 120 degree heat, wind blowing, dust on the camera, dust in the lenses, sand everywhere,” as MacGillivray recalls it.

He came away with visually stunning pieces including a trek to the ruins of the Madain Saleh, “two cities carved out of limestone,” he says.  “A second visual highlight is diving in the shipwrecks off of Jeddah in the Red Sea.  It’s a beautiful environment.  The water is like 85 degrees, there are coral reefs and it’s super clear with all kinds of fish and different animals.  And a third would be the Hajj — the tribute to faith that happens once a year, when three million pilgrims come to Mecca to celebrate their faith and commune together.”  Although he wasn’t permitted in the main mosque, “My camera team was Muslim and were able to take the camera in.  We also had helicopters and a view of everything from an adjoining high rise building.  It’s an amazing thing to witness.”

“Arabia 3D” was hatched after the 9/11 attacks nearly 10 years ago now.  Not by MacGillivray. but by “a group of Arab business people who were educated in the U.S. and have homes over here, who love the U.S. and who love Arabia,” who came to him with the idea.

“They were completely shocked by that event and they completely understand the reaction of everyone toward Arabs after that event, but they decided that, well, the U.S. population isn’t gettting the full picture of what it is to be an Arab.  We don’t know much about it, and what we do know is not very good.  We’ve gotten a lesson in the bad stuff over the last 10 years.  They thought, ‘Maybe if we make an IMAX film to show around the world, it will give a full picture.’”

He maintains that his mandate required filming “not in a propaganda-ish way, no rah rah we’re great kind of thing” — just real.
By now, having shot his film during nine trips over four years of time, he says, “I really loved the people that we met — hundreds and hundreds of really amazing people.”

Next up for MacGillivray:  chilling out in a giant way.  He’s now working on an IMAX film of the Arctic.

Margaret Cho Lifetime photo

Fans of Margaret Cho will like this.  The “Drop Dead Diva” costar tells us, “I’m in this season much more than in the last two.  It’s been a lot more work for me.”

The ever-provocative comedian is happy about that, and says the extra load hasn’t been any burden.  “I’d been touring for months beforehand so it was great to stay in one place for awhile.”  Now, with just a handful of episodes left to shoot in Season 3 — which premieres June 19 — she says she’s been flying back and forth between L.A. and Georgia, where the series shoots.  “I’m kind of getting out there and getting ready for the next leg of my tour.”

Her character, legal assistant Teri Lee, has “a couple of love interests this season,” Cho informs.  One of them is a former boyfriend of her boss, Jane Bingum (Brooke Elliott) — the plus-sized attorney into whose body plopped the spirit of a self-centered model at the outset of the quirky hit Lifetime series.  (Season 2 was released on home video last month, for those interested in catching up.)  Also coming up is a dance-centric episode in which Cho got to reunite with her “Dancing With the Stars” professional partner, Louis Van Amstel.

“I really love him,” she says.  “We got very close very quickly, which is what happens on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’  It was really fun.  I’m such a fan of his.”  As far as having to brush up on her ballroom dance moves?  “Oh, yes.  I forgot everything.  No — you don’t really forget.  That kind of intensity stays with you,” she says.

Her dance card outside the series is definitely full as well.  She has commitments all summer, and her tour takes her to the U.K. this fall.  She also has her “Cho Dependent” concert film that she recently unveiled at the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival.  Expect that to get a cable premiere, then move to DVD.  “I’m excited because it’s a great show.  I do a lot of set comedy, I do a lot of music in there.  It was received really well in Hawaii.”

And on the TV side, Cho, who recently did an outrageous turn as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il on “30 Rock,” says “I hope to do more of that.  That was so cool.  It was Tina Fey’s idea.  It’s really exciting to do a show you’re a fan of.”

Kris Allen

“American Idol” Kris Allen will have family on his mind today (5/29) when he performs at this year’s “National Memorial Day Concert” in Washington, D.C..  “Both my granddads were in the military,” says the 25-year-old singer from Conway, Arkansas.

“And actually my wife’s family is a military family.  Her dad is retired from the Air Force” — in addition to her brother, who is just back from Iraq.  Allen also says he’s been looking forward to meeting fellow luminaries on this year’s lineup.  The show, being aired on PBS (check your local listings) has Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna as cohosts, with an appearance by General Colin Powell and performances by “American Idol’” contestant Pia Toscano, Forest Whitaker,  Dianne Wiest, B.B. King, Jason Ritter, Hayley Westenra, Daniel Rodriguez, Yolanda Adams, A.J. Cook and the National Symphony Orchestra.

Regis Philbin

Morgan Fairchild held at gunpoint.  Ice-T in an extreme car accident.  Ed Begley, Jr. attacked by a gang of teenagers and nearly fatally knifed.  Cheryl Tiegs, in a plane in Africa when the pilot has a seizure just as he’s starting a takeoff.  “Once we heard these stories, they just couldn’t be ignored,” declares producer Seth Jarrett.  Thus, his latest TV offering, BIO channel’s June 18-debuting “Celebrity Close Calls,” was hatched.

Other names talking about their brushes with death include Jewel, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, Tiffany, Brooke Burns, Lou Diamond Phllips, Bobby Brown, Elizabeth Rohm, Gary Busey, Ed Begley Jr. and Louis Gossett, Jr.

Jarrett and his wife Julie Insogna Jarrett, already bring us the cult favorite “Celebrity Ghost Stories,” in which an array of some 150 stars have appeared to share their own personal tales of spirits and such.  The third season of “Celebrity Ghost Stories” premieres June 18 as well.

“Because of the subject matter in ‘Celebrity Ghost Stories,’ every once in a while, one of those stories naturally led to story of a near-death experience, either something said on camera or in passing,” Jarret explains.

“I think people do ‘Clebrity Close Calls’ for different reasons than ghost stories.  It’s much more emotional,” he says.  “The stories are much more traumatic and difficult for them to share.  I think they’re thinking they can help someone else out there, someone who had a traumatic car accident, or went through bouts of depression and considered suicide.  Obviously, they’re compelling, entertaining stories.”

With “Ghost Stories,” he feels, “They’re sharing stories they truly believe in, usually experiences that changed their lives in some way.  They want people to understand how and when it happened.  It’s a completely new outlet for people to share these kinds of stories.”

This year’s who’s who of booos includes Regis Philbin, Harry Hamlin, Jerry Stiller, Valerie Harper, Bret Michaels, Nick Hogan, Eva Amurri, Mia Tyler, Ming-Na, Beverly D’Angelo, Sally Struthers, Natasha Henstridge, Cassandra Peterson, Keisha Knight Pulliam, Matthew Gray-Gubler, Brett Butler, Penelope Ann Miller and Chi McBride.

Jarrett, who conducts all the “Ghost Story” interviews, tells us, “I came into this being an open-minded skeptic, and at this point I still have not had an experience myself.  But I’m definitely far more of a believer than when I started.  Doing 150 interviews, over time you start to see the incredible consistencies in these stories, from celebrities you know do not run in the same circles.”

Gina Bellman, Timothy Hutton TNT photo

Television series creators who make the most of sexual tension between characters always take a risk when they decide to bring their long-lusting couples together — which is just what happened at the end of Timothy Hutton’s “Leverage” last season.  Viewers got a surprise when it turned out that Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman) was hidden under the covers of his character, Nate Ford’s bed.  But Hutton says their furtive romance has brought a whole different tension to the hit drama about an elite team of modernday Robin Hoods that returns to the TNT lineup June 26.

“When last we left Sophie and Nate, they were in that hotel room in San Lorenzo.  So when we start off this season, they have to figure out how to tell the team they’re seeing each other, whether it’s a good idea or bad idea to tell the team.  They decide it’s a bad idea.  Then they have to wonder whether other members of the team know.  And it’s very sticky for Nate and Sophie, how to define the relationship, how it’s going to interfere with the work.  We’re dealing with it in very kind of awkwardly funny moments.”

That is not to say that “Leverage” has any less of its usual quotient of capers.   For instance, Leon Rippy of “Saving Grace” and “Deadwood” “comes in and plays a very shadowy character who, it turns out, has been aware of the Leverage team’s every move.  The team doesn’t know how to classify him.  What is it he wants?  There’s a whole arc involving him,” Hutton says.

As far as special episodes on the way, “There’s a story about a human heart being carried through an airport that gets stolen by someone to be put on the black market for organs.  The Leverage team has to come in and save the day so the proper recipient gets it.  That episode is being done in real time, because obviously there is only a finite amount of time that the organ is viable.  It’s the ultimate ticking clock.”
This is the third year the “Leverage” company has worked in Oregon, and “I love it here,” he volunteers.  “I live here six months of the year.  It really is quite a family up here.”

Hutton’s younger son, Milo, joins him whenever he has a break from his school in Paris, where he lives part-time with his mother (Hutton’s former wife, illustrator Aurore Giscard d’Estaing).  As for whether he’s likely to follow his dad into show business?  “He’s nine, so I just hope he gets interested in as many things as possible.  He loves being on the set right now.  He’s also a big ‘Harry Potter’ fan, a big ‘Indiana Jones’ fan.  He’s into sports, too.”

Elder son Noah, from Hutton’s first marriage, to Debra Winger, “is already doing quite well in his own career as a documentary filmmaker,” says Hutton.  He’s a music composer-editor-filmmaker-writer — very comfortable behind the camera.  I don’t think he’ll be going out in front of it.  I’m very proud of him.”

Keith Urban

Sounds like country super star Keith Urban has a bit of a taste for the retro.  At least, that’s the sense one gets from the selection of summer “Must Haves” that the artist gave to Entertainment Weekly for its comprehensive summertime entertainment double issue, due on stands tomorrow (5/27).   Keith, who heads out on the North American leg of his “Get Closer” tour June 16, insists he must have the following  (but wait!  No mention of Nicole Kidman and their girls?) :

1) My Boom Box.  “I have an old Sony ghetto blaster from the ’80s that I got on eBay a long time ago.  It’s one of the huge ones with a cassette deck in it, and sometimes we’ll set deck chairs under the bus awning and crank up a mixtape. I’ve got one that’s got everything from Hank Williams to U2 to Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z to George Strait to old stuff from the ’80s.”

2)  My Motorcycles.  “I have a Harley- Davidson Fat Boy, a 100th-anniversary one that Kenny Chesney gave me, and I just bought a vintage motorcycle from the ’60s called a Matchless. I love being able to get out and see a lot of places we’re playing. I can get out and drive around the neighborhoods and then mention them during the gig that night, and it’s great because people feel a little more connected, and I feel more connected too.”

3)  Sweet Tea.  “If a restaurant serves it, I’m a happy camper. I’ll put in a plug for Milo’s Famous Sweet Tea. I’m not associated with them! I just like that tea.”

4) My Banjo.  “I have a six string banjo that I’ve had since probably 1995 that I use on all my records. Banjo goes on everything—it’s a bit like whipped cream, really.  Well, I guess whipped cream shouldn’t go on fried chicken. But it does seem to fit really well on anything that’s got a groove. I mean, you can play it on ‘Hey Ya!’ by OutKast.”

Okay, but we’re still trying to digest the fact he plays music on a cassette deck.

Kris Allen Fox photo

“American Idol” Season 8 winner Kris Allen shrugs off the fact that his two favorites for this year’s winner — Haley Reinhart and Casey Abrams — didn’t make it to the final showdown.  “It is what it is.  The people in the finale are great, too — Lauren and Scotty.  I can’t imagine going through what they’re going through at that age, so kudos to them,” adds the 25-year-old peformer, speaking of 16-year-old Lauren Alaina and 17-year-old Scotty McCreery. 

 ”She’s a sweetheart, really nice.  When they sang that Carrie Underwood and Randy Travis song together, Lauren just blew away everyone in the audience,” adds Kris — who happens to be Lauren’s favorite past “Idol” winner.  

 Kris says he’ll be at both tonight’s (5/24) final performance show and tomorrow night’s (5/25) crowning of this season’s “Idol” as an audience member.  “There’s always a party after the results show and I think I’ll go to that,” he says.  “It’s a lot of fun, and great to see all the people you don’t get to see very often.”

 The singer-songwriter will be among the stellar lineup for this Sunday’s (5/29) National Memorial Day Concert in Washington D.C., performing before an estimated crowd of some 300,000 — and millions more watching live, here and abroad.

 ”That will be, without question, the biggest crowd I’ve sung for — by far,” he notes with a laugh.  “They asked me and, when you think of something like that, it’s kind of a no-brainer.  I’m really excited to be out there that day.”  Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna cohost, with a lineup that also includes General Colin Powell, “Idol’s” Pia Toscano, Forest Whitaker,  Dianne Wiest, B.B. King, Jason Ritter, Hayley Westenra, Daniel Rodriguez, Yolanda Adams and the National Symphony Orchestra. 

Kris will sing “God Bless the U.S.A.” at the event honoring those who have served or are serving in the military, particularly those who lost their lives in the line of duty.  Lending a particularly emotional personal note to the event, Kris notes that his wife’s brother is just now coming back from Iraq.  “Everyone’s really happy.  I’d love to have him at the concert, but he’ll probably want to just be home chilling with his wife.”

ALSO:  Kris found out recently that “Still Got Tonight,” which he cowrote, and which has become a single for Matthew Morrison, is going to be performed by Morrison in [TONIGHT'S] the June 8 season finale of “Glee.”  “I met Matt not too long ago and we had lunch together.  He’s a really nice guy.  And then I hung out on the set of ‘Glee.’  That was really cool.  That it’s in the finale is even better.  It’s nice to be on this side of things, for once,” he adds, speaking of his behind-the-scenes role. 

Kris has been focused on writing songs for himself of late, in anticipation of recording another album, soon.  He tells us, “I’m hoping that — it should be — out sometime this year.  If not, I’ll look at it as a failure.”

From “Entertainment Tonight”

 EX-HUSBAND OF ARNOLD’S ALLEGED MISTRESS SPEAKS ABOUT BETRAYAL FOR THE FIRST TIME

May 24, 2011 (Los Angeles, CA) –  ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT‘s MARK STEINES  spoke with Rogelio Baena, the ex-husband of Arnold’s mistress Mildred “Patty” Baena, for a new interview to air tonight, May 24th.

Rogelio tells ET he thought Arnold’s alleged love child was his biological child all along and that he learned that the boy was not his son only one week ago. He goes on to call the situation a “betrayal” and ”Arnold Schwarzenegger for me, [was] my hero… Maria is destroyed.”

 Married to Patty for ten years, today Rogelio says he’d like to tell his son, “I am your father. That’s all.”

Fortune Feimster

“Chelsea Lately” writer/performer Fortune Feimster was surprised by the widespread retweeting and re-quoting of her Twitter comment last week regarding the revelation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child.  The rising comedy performer cracked:  “Good thing Arnold Schwarzenegger has been upholding the sanctity of marriage since apparently us gay folks don’t know how to” — and the remark was picked up by entities including The Los Angeles Times.

She then got some flak from people who defended Schwarzenegger.  “I’m not trying to offend anybody, but he vetoed two marriage equality bills, and I have a right to point that out,” notes Fortune, who is poised, articulate, steady and very, very smart.

We know that she is all those things, because she was on staff here at Beck/Smith Hollywood Exclusive for several years while cutting her teeth in the comedy realm.  She is also an alumna of the famed The Groundlings improv company as well as a standup comic seen in clubs on both coasts and in-between — who got her first national exposure last year on “Last Comic Standing.”

The intensity of a burgeoning show business career would be plenty to deal with without the added responsibility of being watched as an out gay woman.  But “I don’t mind having that responsibility,” she says.  “I’m a gay person.  Obviously I have strong opinions about our rights.”

Fortune Feimster, Chelsea Handler

MEANWHILE:  Chelsea Handler couldn’t be a hotter property, of course, with the new “Lies That Chelsea Told Me” attaining No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, her popular E! show, and now, her newly picked-up NBC prime time series, “Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea.”  (Laura Prepon is playing Chelsea, while the comedian herself shows up as a recurring character, Chelsea’s sister.)  For Fortune, the focus is Handler’s 11:00 show and all the convivial contretemps that go with it.

How does she feel about Chelsea’s remarks about her clothes, her size — calling her “Mister”?  “It’s like getting picked on by a big sister.  It’s all out of love.  She doesn’t say anything about me that I don’t joke about myself.  I never feel it’s out of meanness.  She also jokes about herself and other people, like Brad (Wollack) and his red hair.  She homes in on whatever it is that makes you different,” says the North Carolina-born performer, who stresses that she’s grateful to her very funny boss.

Up ’til now, Fortune’s job requirements have included antics from portraying the singer Meatloaf and terminally chic reality personality Rachel Zoe — to having to be seen in a bikini top.  She doesn’t mind looking ridiculous, but “I’m not one to bare it all,” she says.  “I have my limits.  No nudity.”