Names and faces

John Legend attends the screening for "Legend of the Underground" during the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival at Brookfield Place on Thursday, June 10, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
John Legend attends the screening for "Legend of the Underground" during the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival at Brookfield Place on Thursday, June 10, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

• Although Chrissy Teigen is in the midst of a cyberbullying scandal, her husband says she's weathering the storm. "She's doing great," John Legend told a paparazzo when asked how his wife (since 2013) is handling all the criticism. "Take care," the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award winner added before driving away from reporters earlier this week. "Have a good one." Teigen, 35, initially faced backlash after now-26-year-old non-binary star Courtney Stodden revealed that she once sent private messages encouraging the then-16-year-old to kill themselves. On Monday, Teigen, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, posted an open letter, expressing her regret over those past tweets and asked fans for "patience." The "Cravings" cookbook author also wrote that there are "more than just a few" people she needs to publicly apologize to and has been reaching out to some of the people she was mean to privately. Legend supported his wife by tweeting it from his verified Twitter account and highlighting a line she wrote which said, "We are all more than our worst moments." Teigen is also facing bullying allegations from "Project Runway" alum Michael Costello, who accused Teigen of bullying him in 2014, forcing him to deal with "deep, unhealed trauma." Teigen has yet to publicly address Costello's allegations.

• "Billie Jean" may have been about "just a girl" who was not Michael Jackson's lover, but the music video for the song has reached a historic milestone -- attaining 1 billion views on YouTube, making it only the third music video of the 1980s to rack up that many viewers, and the first 1980s clip by a solo artist to hit that benchmark. Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O'Mine," from 1988, and a-ha's 1984 groundbreaking video for "Take On Me," previously entered the Billion Views club. Debuting on MTV in March 1983, the Steve Barron-directed "Billie Jean" video has been averaging 600,000 daily views globally this year, according to YouTube. "Billie Jean" was inducted into the Music Video Producers Hall of Fame in 1992. The track, written by Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones, won two Grammy Awards and two American Music Awards. When Jackson's record company, CBS Records, first asked MTV to play "Billie Jean," the channel's programming executives refused because they reportedly didn't feel that Black music was "rock" enough. When Walter Yetnikoff, then president of CBS, told MTV that if it didn't air "Billie Jean," he'd pull all the label's other artists off the channel, MTV caved in and put the "Billie Jean" video in heavy rotation only after it topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2007 file photo, pop star Michael Jackson poses on the red carpet during the RainbowPUSH Coalition Los Angeles 10th annual awards in Los Angeles.  (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2007 file photo, pop star Michael Jackson poses on the red carpet during the RainbowPUSH Coalition Los Angeles 10th annual awards in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok, File)

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