STARS ON MARS

To Boldly Go Where No Star Has Gone Before.

By Ryan A. Berenz

Stars On Mars

Mondays beginning June 5 on FOX NEW SERIES!

Some celebrities act like they’re on another planet. Stars on Mars takes it a step further.

In this new unscripted series, 12 “celebronauts” will suit up and enter a simulated Mars habitat, where they live, eat, sleep and strategize in a Survivor-style game on a fake Red Planet. They’ll have to accomplish tasks from Mission Control, contend with the environment and make nice with their crewmates. One by one, the celebs will be voted off the planet and launched back to Earth until one Martian stands alone.

William Shatner, a man who knows a few things about Hollywood and spaceflight, will issue orders to the celebs from Mission Control. After decades at the helm of Star Trek’s starship Enterprise, the actor, now age 92, took a real suborbital ride aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle in 2021.

“It’s a rush. It’s incredible,” Shatner says of his astronaut experience. “It’s something out of a dream and a nightmare, going up into space. It’s all that dreamlike thing where you experience something that you’ve never experienced before, and also you realize it’s fraught with danger.”

The celebronauts will live in a Mars station replica built in the Australian Outback town of Coober Pedy, known for its opal mines. “It is one of the hottest, driest places on Earth,” Shatner says. The heat is so intense in Coober Pedy that most of the residents live in underground “dugouts,” making it the ideal place to simulate a confined colony.

The rust-colored, rocky terrain is also a perfect setting. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory once gave Shatner a virtual-reality view of Mars with footage captured by a rover. “I used these 3D goggles, and everywhere you turn, you’re looking at the landscape of Mars,” he says. “So I’ve gotten a real vision of it, and it’s not unlike Coober Pedy.”

While the show is tongue-in-cheek and the goal is entertainment, there’s something to be learned from this experiment. It is inevitable that a few humans will be interplanetary celebrities for setting foot on Mars. “As an outpost in moving mankind around the solar system and the adventure of knowledge, it certainly is going to happen,” Shatner says. “The journey to Mars is closing in, but Stars on Mars will get there first.”

Sports Analyst and Professional Football Player RICHARD

Widely Known Comedic Actor CHRISTOPHER

Professional Wrestler and UFC Champion, Olympic Medalist and Actress RONDA

Multiplatinum-Certified Singer, Songwriter and Dancer

Television Personality, Actress and Author

2

Tlc Forever

Saturday, June 3 on LIFETIME

This powerful behind-thescenes documentary about one of the most influential female groups in music history, R&B trio TLC, follows remaining members T-Boz (Tionne Watkins) and Chilli (Rozonda Thomas) down memory lane as they prepare for their upcoming summer tour.

TLC was formed in Atlanta in 1991 by mutual acquaintances when the three were barely old enough to drink — Chilli and Left Eye (Lisa Lopes) were 20, and T-Boz was 21 — and what the women remember most from the early days was their innocence.

“We were so excited to live out our dreams,” Chilli told us.

“I think we had the most fun because we didn’t know how important it was at the time to be in control of your business and all that kind of stuff. We were just having fun and we were so excited.”

During the ’90s and early 2000s, TLC won four Grammy Awards, sold millions of records and launched countless hit songs on Billboard Hot 100 charts. Behind the scenes, though, as the documentary shows, the women were dealing with many challenges too, such as T-Boz’s lifelong struggle with her health. Business disagreements often led to drama between the members and their staff; the band declared bankruptcy at the height of their fame. “Our drama wasn’t catty like regular girls. It was just life drama,” T-Boz explains. “Business and stuff like that.”

“When I got in the group, we just really clicked,” Chilli adds. “It was just a natural chemistry that was there on day one. Then the love started growing, the friendship part of it started growing — us as sisters — all of that started growing. It was us against everyone else. We never had any type of jealousy toward each other at all. Our beef was always with business and stuff like that. And then, obviously, when our sister, Lisa, would act out a bit, but it was always business related. It was never her looking at me and Tionne as if she didn’t like us. Nothing stupid or petty like that.”

Lopes, whose notoriously heated relationship with NFL wide receiver Andre Rison was headline news for weeks after she burned his house down, almost went to prison for arson in 1994.

“She didn’t mean to do it. But you got the whole world talking about you. You’re on CNN every day,” T-Boz recalls. “It’s crazy, because O.J. Simpson is the one who finally kicked us off CNN.”

Then tragedy struck hard in 2002, when Lopes died in a car the remaining members of TLC returned full force to their music. By then, both women had children to raise as well, and had to find a balance between motherhood and work, which they managed to do successfully while maintaining their roles in the music industry.

“We’ve never stopped touring. We’re always on the road. The accident in Honduras, leaving the trio a duo. Having to grieve for their close friend, whom they both saw more as a sister, while maintaining a public presence proved difficult. The love Chilli and T-Boz still have for Lopes is palpable whenever they talk about her.

“When we were looking back at footage with the three of us, I got a little teary-eyed,” Chilli says about the making of the film. “That was very touching for me. I’m the crybaby in the group.”

“I’m not. I do not cry like that,” T-Boz adds. “Well, if I talk about my kids, I’ll cry. But I was happy to see the good times, when we were happy together and stuff. That was a great feeling.”

After their grief subsided, only time that we weren’t able to tour, obviously, was during COVID,” Chilli shares. “Last year, we were in Europe and Australia. This year, it’s the U.S. tour.”

The tour, called Hot Summer Nights, kicks off June 1 and goes until July 14. It will include their No. 1 hit singles “No Scrubs,” “Waterfalls,” “Creep” and many other classics. Asked what they would like the world to remember them for, Chilli says, “Being authentic. We’re still, to this day, authentically us. And if we don’t feel it, we don’t believe in it, we’re not going to do it, we’re not going to say it.”

“Stand strong, believe in who you are, and don’t change that for nothing or nobody,” T-Boz adds.

— Zhanna Slor