{"id":639823,"date":"2026-05-13T03:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T03:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639823\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T03:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T03:35:12","slug":"heres-what-happened-at-javits-center-shindig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639823\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s What Happened At Javits Center Shindig"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDisney<\/a> didn\u2019t want to miss out on all the songs and dances at this year\u2019s Upfronts<\/a> so brought along the Savannah Bananas to kick things off with a slightly off-pitch opener.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was apt given that their second baseman Jackson Olson is waltzing off to Dancing with the Stars. It wasn\u2019t the most tuneful of openings but Disney had an ace up its sleeve: closing out with a three-song performance by Olivia Rodrigo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe barnstorming baseball team was followed by Anne Hathaway<\/a>, star of Disney\u2019s The Devil Wears Prada 2, to introduce new CEO Josh D\u2019Amaro.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last two years have seen former CEO Bob Iger present on stage \u2013 the first time in 30 years<\/a> \u2013 so it makes sense that his successor D\u2019Amaro gets in on the act.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is my first Upfront as CEO of The Walt Disney Company, so naturally we decided to keep the pressure low and put a few thousand media executives in one room to stare at me,\u201d he said before cracking a joke about the New York Knicks.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe former parks boss threw a little shade at his rivals. \u201cEverybody, in their own way, is racing to assemble something. Studios. Streaming services. Sports rights. Live events. Brands that audiences feel something about. It is, in a way, a real compliment to this company. Because what they are racing to assemble is, more or less, the picture of what we already are,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thing is, you cannot acquire a hundred years of trust. You can\u2019t put generations of belonging on a balance sheet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNext up was FX heartthrob Paul Anthony Kelly, who played John F. Kennedy Jr. in Love Story, to introduce ad boss Rita Ferro.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came the sports: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was joined by Joe Buck to talk up the fact that Disney has the Super Bowl in 2027. Jason Kelce then brought out a line-up of Super Bowl MVPs including\u00a0Troy Aikman, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith, Desmond Howard, Jerry Rice, Hines Ward, Kurt Warner\u00a0and\u00a0Nick Foles to promote this fact.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoodell had some fun on stage, hugging Buck in the increasingly aggressive way that he has been known to hug players at the draft.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen it was onto television and film with intermittent promotions for shows such as Hulu NFL drama The Land with stars William H. Macy, Mandy Moore and Christopher Meloni on stage.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey were followed by a Dancing with the Stars moment with pros including Mark Ballas and Val Chmerkovskiy, Ke Huy Quan, known to some as Short Round and to younger fans as Gary DeSnake in Zootopia 2, Sigourney Weaver promoting the Disney+ premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash and her role in The Mandalorian and Grogu, Rosario Dawson\u00a0talking up the season two launch of Ahsoka on Disney+.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came the movie stars: Robert Downey Jr. followed a Marvel \u201chype sizzle\u201d ahead of the launch of Avengers: Doomsday in December, before being interrupted by Loki star Tom Hiddleston to promote his \u201cside hustle\u201d Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston for Nat Geo, and Paul Bettany to show a trailer for WandaVision spinoff VisionQuest.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTwenty years ago, Kevin Feige officially asked me to play Tony Stark in Iron Man, it changed my life,\u201d Downey said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere were some linear stars on stage including Abbott Elementary\u2019s Quinta Brunson and High Potential\u2019s Kaitlin Olsen and Scrubs \u201cthrouple\u201d Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison.<\/p>\n

\n\tThings quickly creepy with American Horror Story. Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Billie Lourd\u00a0and\u00a0Emma Roberts\u00a0revealed that the aforementioned FX heartthrob Paul Anthony Kelly would be joining the Ryan Murphy-produced series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been expecting you, Paul,\u201d said Paulson.<\/p>\n

\n\tThings remained creepy with a trailer of FX\u2019s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis\u2019 The Shards. Kaia Gerber, Igby Rigney and Home Gere were then joined by Lindsay Lohan, Shailene Woodley and Kit Harrington to show off Hulu\u2019s Count My Lies, followed by FX\u2019s Olivia Colman and Brie Larson-starrer Cry Wolf and Clare Danes and Ewan McGregor to talk up Hulu\u2019s The Spot.<\/p>\n

\n\tDon\u2019t worry, from there it was more sports. Shaquille O\u2019Neal, with some \u201cShaq stats\u201d, was joined by Dallas Mavericks star Cooper Flagg and commentator Kenny Smith as well, in a surprise move, New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, fresh from helping the team sweep Philadelphia 76ers to reach the Eastern Conference finals.<\/p>\n

\n\tArguably the biggest cheer of the night went to Billie Jean King, who is the subject of Give Me The Ball, a documentary directed by Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff, that highlighted her Billie Jean King\u2019s impact on tennis and global social activism. \u201cWe\u2019re just getting started,\u201d the tennis legend said before hitting a number of autographed tennis balls into the quarter zip vest-loving crowd.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came Jimmy Kimmel to close things out with his annual roast. Kimmel joked that he\u2019s been through so much \u201cbullsh*t\u201d over the last twelve months that it made him \u201cappreciate this bullsh*t\u201d at the Upfronts.<\/p>\n

\n\tKimmel\u2019s daughter Jane then came out to introduce Olivia Rodrigo to perform. Amazon might have had Diplo and Shaboozey at their Upfront afterparty, but Disney flexed its muscle with a three song set featuring Rodrigo\u2019s new single Drop Dead, the Misery Business-esque Good 4 You and Get Him Back!<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was a rather sweet ending as Rodrigo pulled Jane Kimmel on stage for a final gang vocal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s it from me, probably forever,\u201d joked her dad moments early. We\u2019ll see next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disney didn\u2019t want to miss out on all the songs and dances at this year\u2019s Upfronts so brought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1855,23322,236,3716,88,200651,8246,35622],"class_list":["post-639823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-abc","tag-anne-hathaway","tag-celebrities","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-josh-damaro","tag-olivia-rodrigo","tag-upfronts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}