The daily gossip: Neil Patrick Harris apologizes for 'corpse of Amy Winehouse' meat platter, Star Wars boss suggests recasting Han Solo was a mistake, and more

1. Neil Patrick Harris apologizes for 'corpse of Amy Winehouse' meat platter

Neil Patrick Harris has apologized for an Amy Winehouse joke that became legendary in the worst way possible. In 2011, the How I Met Your Mother star hosted a Halloween party that featured a grotesque meat platter meant to look like Amy Winehouse's dead body, which was labeled "the corpse of Amy Winehouse." This was just months after the singer tragically died of alcohol poisoning at 27. Harris faced renewed backlash for the dark joke after a picture from the party resurfaced, and he has now apologized in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago," he said. "It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now." The actor praised Winehouse as a "once-in-a-generation talent," adding, "I'm sorry for any hurt this image caused."

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2. Lucasfilm president suggests recasting Han Solo was a mistake

Four years after Solo: A Star Wars Story bombed, Lucasfilm seems to be throwing star Alden Ehrenreich under the bus. A new Vanity Fair story about the future of Star Wars touches on the 2018 young Han Solo movie becoming a box office disappointment, and it suggests this was because the character's "swagger may be too singular for another actor to replicate." Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy apparently agrees. "There should be moments along the way when you learn things," Kennedy said. "Now it does seem so abundantly clear that we can't do that." Of course, some would argue Solo failed because audiences weren't that interested in a Han Solo prequel and because it was released mere months after another Star Wars movie. But this take about not recasting characters with younger actors is certainly interesting coming a week before the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a ... prequel starring a younger actor. Look out, Ewan McGregor: get ready to be replaced with an Alec Guinness deepfake.

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Vanity Fair

3. ABC orders 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' primetime spinoff

Paging Turd Ferguson: Celebrity Jeopardy! is headed to ABC. The network has ordered a primetime Jeopardy! spinoff that will see celebrities competing for charity, airing on Sundays beginning this fall. Notably, ABC didn't announce who will host, but it will presumably be Mayim Bialik. The original plan was for the Big Bang Theory alum to host Jeopardy! primetime specials and spinoffs while Mike Richards would host the regular daily show — though nine months after Richards stepped down due to offensive podcast comments, Jeopardy! somehow still hasn't hired anyone for that gig. Bialik's sitcom Call Me Kat was renewed for another season this week, though, fueling speculation that she won't have time for the full-time hosting job and that it will go to Ken Jennings instead. No Celebrity Jeopardy! contestants have been announced yet, but we'll be watching closely to see if anyone can possibly turn in a worse performance than Wolf Blitzer.

Variety Deadline

4. Dolly Parton communicates with Miley Cyrus through fax

If you want to be pen pals with Dolly Parton, you may have to jump through a few technical hoops. Speaking with Seth Meyers, Miley Cyrus described the hilarious process of communicating with Parton, her godmother, who still uses a fax machine in the year of our Lord 2022. But it's actually even more complicated than that. "She does a fax, and then someone scans the fax, and then they put it into a text message, and then that gets sent to me," Cyrus explained. The singer recalled an instance when Parton made her "a demo" where she talks about how "super high-tech" she is — but it wasn't super convincing seeing as "it was all through a cassette, which then she voice memoed onto a flip phone, which someone then put onto the iPhone, which then got sent to me." Hey, at least she's managed to eliminate the carrier pigeon from that process.

Uproxx

5. Josh Gad's live performance of 'Let It Go' didn't go well

It looks like there's one person on Earth who didn't have the "Let It Go" lyrics unwillingly drilled into their heads circa 2013: Frozen star Josh Gad himself. The Olaf actor recently performed tunes from Frozen at Carnegie Hall in honor of the film's songwriters, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. But he ran into a slight problem, as he recalled on Good Morning America. "People assume that because I'm in Frozen, I know the lyrics to 'Let It Go,'" he said. "What's funny ... I don't know the lyrics to ''Let It Go.'" Apparently, there was a monitor with the lyrics on it, but everyone just figured he wouldn't need it, leaving him to flounder on stage and make up his own words. "Not a single word was correct," Gad recalled. "It was a disaster!" We did think "the mold never bothered me anyway" sounded a bit off.

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