The surprise TV hit of last season, "The Blacklist," could very well continue to shock audiences, says star James Spader.

In an interview with Collider, Spader says the show's creators are very comfortable with killing off major characters and hints more big changes could be coming soon.

"There is no question that, on our show, we attempt to turn things on their ear when we are able, and (killing characters) is certainly a very effective way of doing that, but it really has to relate to story, and it did last year," Spader says.

"It will be very hard predict how this season unfolds and whether that will translate into major characters on our show disappearing. I don't know if I can really speak to that, in an articulate way, without telling you something that I shouldn't tell."

"The Blacklist" airs on Monday nights on Global.

http://bit.ly/1sul5DD

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New York magazine's Vulture blog talked to Hank Azaria about how he came up with some of the classic voices he created for "The Simpsons."

For Comic Book Guy, he says he imagined an overgrown child and was inspired by a fellow student in college.

"By the time I did 'The Simpsons,' I was young, 23 or 24, and I already had like 30 to 40 character voices; some were celebrity impressions and some were just people I knew with voices that tickled me," Azaria says.

"(Comic Book Guy) is a know-it-all fanboy, like that guy was. He was very didactic. He made announcements. He had a list. He would tell everybody if they were in his top five or bottom five of the week."

Azaria also describes how he came to voice Cletus Spuckler, Dr. Nick Riviera, Milhouse's dad Kirk Van Houten and Springfield nuclear power plant employee Frank Grimes.

http://vult.re/1rmIbZp

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You may have noticed Lena Dunham, the creator and star of "Girls," is all over the place these days.

That's because she's promoting her new book, "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned.'"

Continuing with that theme, she's been posting videos to YouTube answering questions from fans on feminism, dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder, having good sex, and laughing.

http://thecut.io/1t0cWBl

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It's one of the top rated shows in Canada and the United States and has won a boatload of Emmys, but "Big Bang Theory" doesn't get much respect.

And that's unfair, argues the Daily Beast. It would be so easy for the "Big Bang" creators to dumb down the show to goose its ratings even further but to their credit, they haven't, says Daily Beast writer Kevin Fallon.

"If 'the Big Bang Theory' was anything like most long-running sitcoms in their respective later years, Sheldon would just run around shouting 'Bazinga!' for 22 minutes each week and everyone would collect a paycheck," Fallon writes.

"This is also a show that decided that in order to get better it needed to beef up its female presence. And it did. It can't be undersold that a wildly popular show in this day and age recognized the importance for a female perspective, cast two actresses who weren't your typical network comedy hires — Mayim Bialik as Amy and Melissa Rauch as Bernadette — and instantly saw the show get better. In fact, some of its strongest moments since involved the show's girls."

http://thebea.st/1wMDA4l

News from © The Canadian Press, 2014