Rob LeDonne

The morning of the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Summer Games, NBC Olympics prime-time producer Rob Hyland woke up a little before 7 a.m. in his Paris hotel room and had a sinking feeling. “I had some breakfast, looked out the window and noticed the rain falling,” he recalls to Billboard. “My first thought was, ‘Wow. This may literally put a damper on an unbelievably ambitious production.’”
In just a few hours, the eyes of the world would witness the grand opening of the Paris Summer Olympics,...

An interview with Gracie Abrams

In the wake of writer Richard Meryman’s death in 2015, his wife Elizabeth was rummaging through their attic. Meryman, a writer for Life magazine, known for his iconic conversations with indelible figures (including Marilyn Monroe, in her final interview) appeared to have one more major story waiting in the wings. Somewhere among the dusty stacks, Elizabeth discovered something akin to lost treasure: 40 hours worth of candid interviews with Elizabeth Taylor. Made throughout 1964—the year after...

On a trip through southern Italy in search of La Dolce Vita, writer Rob LeDonne finds an unexpectedly symbiotic travel partner in his mom.
March 29, 2024
“I just can’t do a lot of stairs.”
My mother tells me this on our first afternoon in Puglia as we’re munching on eggplant-stuffed Panzerotti in Ostuni’s sprawling town square, the kick-off to what will be a two-week journey around Italy. Unfortunately for her, that fateful plea was the equivalent of trying to avoid sand in the Serengeti. We ...

A formidable voice since her days in the ’60s-era folk and protest movements, Joan Baez has embarked on a new journey of introspection. Her autobiographical debut poetry collection, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, is out later this month from Godine and chronicles her life and rise to fame, from grappling with the trappings of celebrity to navigating the relationships she built along the way, whether with her contemporaries, family, or Bob Dylan.
Though the Grammy-nominated singer-s...

Culture
Inside Pharrell's First-Ever Car Auction
Pharrell's auction house Joopiter shuts down a West Village street and puts a collection of one-of-a-kind vehicles from the ‘80s and ’90s on the block. Gentlemen, start your bidding.
By Rob LeDonne
May 6, 2024
David X Prutting/BFA.com
Pharrell Williams is a man who wears many hats. Musician. Designer. Artist. Heck, he’s even famous for wearing actual hats. This week, Williams revved up an entirely different facet of his continuing creative lege...

Sitting in my room at Hotel Juliana, a luxury oasis in Paris in the shadow of the mighty Eiffel Tower, I’m hungry. This property, located on a quiet residential street and boasting spacious rooms and laid-back hustle and bustle, is more akin to an apartment than a hotel primed for tourists. And since it feels like home, my cravings start to linger to the tastes back in New York. Yes, I’m talking about a never-ending, always-there yearning for Italian food.
You may be thinking: getting Italian...

NYC PRIDE
Wonderland on a full recap of the best moments of this vibrant (and hot!) celebration in the city.
Somewhere near the border of Brooklyn and Queens, in the midst of dusty warehouses and factories that churn out God knows what, there’s a distant beat in the dead of night. Can you hear it? Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. That, my friend, is the sound of Pride weekend in New York City. But let’s be clear: those thumps aren’t to be taken lightly, not by a long shot. They’re siren calls for the LG...

As one of Instagram’s biggest crushes, Manu Ríos’s path to global stardom has led him from his hometown in Calzada de Calatrava in Spain to a burgeoning acting career in the breakout Netflix drama Elite and a role in the new Pedro Almodóvar short Strange Way of Life. Along the way, the 24-year-old mega-influencer has become a fashion It boy with memorable appearances at the last two Met Galas and head-turning looks on red carpets the world over.

It just so happens that his fortunes have risen...

“It’s a significant moment for the entire world when the Beatles have a new song,” so says one of the Fab Four’s biggest fans—a man who just happens to also be one of Hollywood's most beloved directors. Peter Jackson was a precocious teenager when he first came across the Red and Blue compilations in a record store in his New Zealand hometown, buying them with the cash he originally intended to spend on model airplanes.
It kicked off a musical obsession that has, now 50 years later, bled over...

Throughout his acclaimed filmography, Martin Scorsese has been known for left-of-center casting choices. His longtime collaborator and casting director Ellen Lewis said in an interview that they always “try to go outside the box in interesting ways.” For evidence, consider memorable appearances by Scorsese’s mother, Catherine, in “Goodfellas” and the writer Fran Lebowitz as a judge in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
The director’s epic new drama, “,” is no exception. The film tells the story of a ...

"Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" is more than a yuletide classic; it's breaking records decades later. Here's the rockin' history behind Brenda Lee's enduring earworm.
|GRAMMYs/
It may only have been October, but the atmosphere in Nashville's Quonset Hut Studio on the 19th of that month, way back in 1958, was downright festive.
"We had a Christmas tree up and Christmas lights," recalls four-time GRAMMY nominee Brenda Lee 65 years later, of what would be a fortuitous recording session. "The...

Giles Martin, who co-produced “Now and Then” with Paul McCartney, talks to TIDAL about how the historic new track came together — and what John Lennon is expressing through it.
November 1, 2023 by Rob LeDonne
“When you’re working on something like this, you can’t think of the scale,” the producer Giles Martin says with equal parts affability and awe in his voice. “If you do, you’d be like a rabbit in headlights and be constrained by what you’re doing.”
When Martin uses the term “scale,” he’s ...