Entertainment briefs: Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Published: December 26, 2007

NEW YORK — Denise Martin, who gained fame as the lunch lady on CBS' reality show "Survivor: China,” is donating the $50,000 she received from producer Mark Burnett to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDs Foundation.

Martin told viewers on the "Survivor: China” live finale that she'd been demoted to janitor at a school in Douglas, Mass., after finishing fourth on the show. After hearing her story, Burnett surprised Martin with the money to help get her life back.

Two days later, Martin acknowledged on CBS' "The Early Show” that she'd been promoted to custodian, at her request, before the competition.

"It was not my intention to be misleading,” Martin, 40, said. "I'm sorry, and I apologize to everybody.”

In a statement issued by the network, Martin said she took "full responsibility” for her actions.

"I do not feel comfortable about accepting the $50,000. I would instead ask that it be donated to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation,” the statement said. "Please accept my apology.”

LOS ANGELES — Katherine Heigl has married musician Josh Kelley. Heigl, who portrays Dr. Izzie Stevens on "Grey's Anatomy,” and the recording artist tied the knot Sunday in front of a small group of family and friends in a tent outside the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah, CelebTV.com said.

"Grey's Anatomy” co-star T.R. Knight was part of the bridal party, and guests included cast members Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh.

Heigl, 29, and Kelley, 27, met when she appeared in one of his music videos in 2005. They were engaged last year.

Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and "The Colbert Report” with Stephen Colbert are the latest late-night shows to announce they'll return to air in January, albeit without their striking writing staffs.

Both shows will resume production Jan. 7 and return to air that night, a Comedy Central news release said. "The January 7 return follows a scheduled two-week, end-of-year hiatus that was previously built into the shows' production calendars. We continue to hold out hope for a swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again,” the release said.

Both shows feature opening monologues that probably won't be up to WGA striking standards even if both Colbert and Stewart — Emmy-winning WGA members — ad-lib their regular political observations. Interview segments are more likely to be considered kosher.

"We would like to return to work with our writers,” Stewart and Colbert said in a joint statement. "If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

Michael Douglas has a pair of Oscars, a gorgeous wife and pretty much all the other trappings you might expect of a movie star's life. And now he's also the voice of "NBC Nightly News.”

Douglas, 63, made his debut as the evening newscast's announcer last week, intoning a single line — "From NBC News world headquarters in New York, this is ‘NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams'” — at the start of each broadcast. The "Wall Street” and "Basic Instinct” star, who played a TV news cameraman in 1979's "The China Syndrome,” takes over for Howard Reig, a long-time NBC announcer who retired two years ago. NBC has been using a recording of Reig's voice since.

NBC issued a cryptic news release alluding to the new voice as someone "who has a rich, extensive, award-winning theatrical career for nearly 40 years.” Douglas made his first screen appearances in the late 1960s.

How does one persuade an Oscar winner to do an evening-news voiceover? By appealing to his "sense of romance and sentimentality,” a statement from Williams said. "I called him and said, ‘On top of all you've done as an actor, producer and Academy Award winner, this will mean a small slice of immortality in our industry,” Williams said.

Source: Wire Services

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