Will Smith ‘ignored me all week’ says Fresh Prince guest star

Kathy Griffin has claimed that Will Smith ignored her after she landed a guest role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1990.

The comedian, who has previously criticised Smith for slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, made the fresh claims about Smith during Tuesday’s (2 April) episode of her Talk Your Head Off podcast.

The 64-year-old explained that she had landed a guest role on the sitcom before it had even premiered and when Smith was still known for his rap career – which he recently relaunched.

“This was the first big gig I had,” Griffin said, adding that Smith “did not talk to me until show day” and that “he ignored me all week, because he’s launching a gigantic show.”

Continuing she said: “When I finally got to talk to him on shooting day, which was Friday, I said, ‘What would you like me to call you, Fresh Prince or Will?’ And he said, ‘You can call me Will.’”

“So I did, and I was, you know, nervous around him, because I’d seen all his videos, and Jazzy Jeff was there for a day, which was great, and the live audience went crazy when they saw Jazzy Jeff. He may have even DJ’d, if I recall correctly.”

Griffin did say that Smith eventually warmed to her when it came to shooting the episode. “I can’t imagine the pressure he had on. “But I do remember that Friday night when the audience was there and it was time to actually roll tape, he really took his time to kind of get to know me a little bit. And he was asking about me and helping me relax. I didn’t tell him I was nervous, but I think he could tell that I hadn’t done a show this big before.”

Griffin also said that Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav warmed up the studio audience. “So, it was like a party. And I had been to a couple TV tapings of friends of mine that got to be guest stars, and I had never seen anything like this. And so, I remember looking around and being like, ‘Wow, this is how African American shows do it. This is amazing. It’s like a party in here.’”

Following Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock, Griffin expressed concerns that his actions would make life more dangerous for people in her profession. “Let me tell you something, it’s a very bad practice to walk up on stage and physically assault a comedian,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theatres.”

Grand National LIVE: Runners and riders announced for Aintree

The high point of the British horse racing season is upon us with Aintree Festival getting underway today.

Its headline event, the Grand National, takes place on Saturday 5 April, but there’s a thrilling list of races taking place in the build-up to the weekend’s showpiece.

Today’s Aintree Hurdle will be one of the races of the season as two titans face off: Lossiemouth, winner of the Mares’ Hurdle for a second successive year at Cheltenham last month, and Constitution Hill, who took a heavy fall at Prestbury Park when a nailed-on favourite with betting sites for the Champion Hurdle.

The field has been taking shape this week, with 2025 Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin a notable absence, and final runners for the weekend will be confirmed on Thursday morning.

Follow all the build-up and action with The Independent’s liveblog:

Mass grave under football pitch changes what we know about Roman army

Construction workers renovating a Vienna football field stumbled upon a grim piece of history: a mass grave containing the skeletal remains of what are believed to be warriors from the 1st-century Roman Empire.

Unearthed last October, the site has yielded evidence of a brutal battle, likely involving Germanic tribes, marking the first known conflict in the region.

Following extensive analysis, experts at the Vienna Museum revealed their findings on Wednesday, describing the discovery as a “catastrophic event in a military context.”

Located in the Simmering district of Vienna, the mass grave holds the intertwined remains of at least 129 individuals. The excavation team also uncovered numerous dislocated bones, suggesting the final death toll could exceed 150, a finding unprecedented in Central Europe for this period.

“Within the context of Roman acts of war, there are no comparable finds of fighters,” said Michaela Binder, who led the archaeological dig. “There are huge battlefields in Germany where weapons were found. But finding the dead, that is unique for the entire Roman history.”

Soldiers in the Roman Empire were typically cremated until the 3rd century.

The pit where the bodies were deposited suggests a hasty or disorganized dumping of corpses. Every skeleton examined showed signs of injury — to the head, torso and pelvis in particular.

“They have various different battle wounds, which rules out execution. It is truly a battlefield,” said Kristina Adler-Wölfl, head of Vienna city archaeological department. “There are wounds from swords, lances; wounds from blunt trauma.”

The victims were all male. Most were aged 20 to 30 years old and generally showed signs of good dental health.

Carbon-14 analysis helped date the bones to between 80 and 130 A.D. That was cross-checked against known history of relics found in the grave – armor, helmet cheek protectors, the nails used in distinctive Roman military shoes known as caligae.

The most indicative clue came from a rusty dagger of a type in use specifically between the middle of the 1st century and the start of the second.

The research continues: Only one victim has been confirmed as a Roman warrior. Archaeologists hope DNA and strontium isotope analysis will help further identify the fighters, and whose side they were on.

“The most likely theory at the moment is that this is connected to the Danube campaigns of Emperor Domitian — that’s 86 to 96 A.D.,” Adler-Wölfl said.

City archaeologists said the discovery also reveals the early signs of the founding of a settlement that would become the Austrian capital of today.

Paris Metro bans David Hockney exhibition poster because artist is holding cigarette

It might seem a perfect match: the French capital – any mention of which inspires images of Seine-adjacent cafes engulfed by a nicotine haze – and one of the world’s foremost advocates of smoking, David Hockney.

But despite the artist famously championing the habit he has enjoyed since 1954, a photograph of the 87-year-old holding a cigarette has been enough to put him at odds with authorities in the capital of the nation famous for Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes.

Next week, Paris will host the largest exhibition of Hockney’s career, curated by the legendary Sir Norman Rosenthal at the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

The exhibition, at the Frank Gehry-designed building in the Bois de Boulogne, will showcase nearly 400 of Hockney’s works over 11 rooms spanning his seven-decade career.

But as the artist prepares for his blockbuster show, citizens travelling on the Paris Metro may be unaware of the significant exhibition taking place in the city.

In a development Hockney described as “complete madness”, lawyers for the Paris transport network have contacted Hockney to inform him that a photograph showing him sitting alongside a new self-portrait cannot be used to advertise the show.

The Parisian transport authorities have taken issue with the fact that Hockney is holding a cigarette in the photograph, but have no objection to the fact that the painting he is holding also depicts him smoking.

The painting is titled Play within a Play within a Play and Me with a Cigarette.

Hockney told The Independent: “The bossiness of those in charge of our lives knows no limits. To hear from a lawyer from the Metro banning an image is bad enough but for them to cite a difference between a photograph and a painting seems, to me, complete madness.

“They only object to the photograph even though I am smoking also in the painting I am holding! I am used to the interfering bossiness of people stopping people making their own choices but this is petty. Art has always been a path to free expression and this is a dismal [decision].”

It is far from the first time that Hockney has faced opposition to his beloved habit, however, with the famed anti-smoking advocate’s father – a 1955 portrait of whom is included in Hockney’s upcoming Paris show – staunchly opposed to the practice.

But for Hockney, the act of smoking is firmly entwined in his work and approach to art.

“He’s 87. He has smoked, I don’t know, maybe 100 cigarettes a day and he still smokes. His lungs are not in a good way, and he accepts that fact,” Rosenthal told The Independent’s editor-in-chief Geordie Greig in a recent interview discussing the upcoming exhibition.

“For him, smoking is a symbol of freedom, to end bossiness. He doesn’t like being told on the packet some awful scare warning. He is very conscious of his physical fragility, but his mind is as clear as is his memory.”

In further remarks following the row with Parisian transport authorities, Rosenthal said: “Madness reigns. To have censorship of this kind with a poster promoting one of the greatest exhibitions of a living artist for a generation is beyond comprehension. Paris is a city of freedom and revolution wrapped into its history – this flies in the face of that.

“This does not make sense. But at least the show is brilliant – the biggest art show ever of Hockney, Britain’s greatest painter.”

The Independent has described the upcoming show as “a spectacular, no-expense-spared, destination event for all art lovers”.

Rosenthal said: “He is the Picasso of our times, and when I say that, people laugh at me, as Picasso was the archetypal artist of the 20th century. But David Hockney is also an incredibly popular artist whose work changes how we see things. When there is a Picasso show at the Tate, there are queues around the block; the same with David. Both really looked, and showed what they saw, and brought joy.”

The exhibition opens on 9 April and is due to run until 31 August.

Sky Sports presenter shares update after undergoing surgery

Sky Sports presenter Anna Woolhouse has shared a health update after undergoing her second laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis.

Sharing a selfie from a hospital bed on Wednesday (2 April), the 41-year-old TV star said the past week has been “quite the wild ride”.

She wrote: “Last week I had my second laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis in 7 years, it was done by the surgeon controlling a robot which blows my mind,” she said. “It ended up being a slightly chunkier op than I’d bargained for but all ok in the end.”

Laparoscopy is a type of surgical procedure that allows a surgeon to access the abdomen through keyhole surgery, a type of minimally invasive surgery. The procedure is sometimes used to allow doctors to cut or remove the endometriosis tissue as a form of treatment.

Woolhouse, who has led Sky Sports boxing coverage since she joined the channel in 2012, said that she wanted to mark endometriosis awareness month, which ended on Monday, to “shine a light on a condition that still isn’t known or spoken about nearly enough”.

She went on to explain how the condition that affects one in 10 women, according to the charity Endometriosis UK, and that the process of getting a diagnosis is often “long, emotional and painful process and can be incredibly debilitating to live with”.

The second slide was a picture of Woolhouse’s midriff area covered in bloody bandages, and in another slide, she shared a picture of Married At First Sight Australia playing on her iPad from her hospital bed.

Woolhouse was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2017 after “endless GP appointments”.

She said: “I had my first surgery in 2018 and for a couple of years my symptoms did improve, but alas it came back and in recent years has resulted in some heartbreaking blows and ultimately meant having another surgery, really hoping this will be it,” she said.

She went on to thank the “brilliant” staff at the Cromwell Hospital in London, adding, “And thank god for MAFS on my iPad (don’t judge!)”

Woolhouse added that she would be focusing on resting and taking steady walks outdoors.

“I might be ‘off games’ for a couple of weeks but I’ll be back wearing dodgy odd socks and trainers in no time,” she concluded the post.

Endometriosis is where cells similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body, such as the ovaries, fallopian tubes and lining of the pelvis.

According to the NHS, it can sometimes affect organs, such as the bladder and bowel. Rarely, it is found in areas outside the pelvis, such as the chest.

Symptoms occur when patches of endometriosis break down and bleed during your period but cannot leave the body, with symptoms including severe period pain, heavy periods, pain when going to the toilet, as well as pain in the pelvic area, extreme fatigue and pain or bleeding in other areas.

There is difficulty with diagnosing endometriosis because symptoms can be similar to other conditions such as adenomyosis, when the lining of the uterus starts growing in the muscle in the wall of the womb, fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease and irritable bowel syndrome.

Celebration destination: Enjoy life’s biggest moments in the Caribbean

With its turquoise-coloured waters, reliably blue skies, and unparalleled natural beauty, the Caribbean is one of the most desirable destinations for a special getaway. From Antigua to Saint Vincent, St Lucia and Barbados, each island offers something a little different – whether you’re looking for a romantic honeymoon retreat, the perfect place to celebrate a milestone birthday, or a fun spot to enjoy a week (or two) of active pursuits with family and friends.

Sandals’ all-inclusive, adult-only resorts are the perfect way to enjoy the islands in luxurious surroundings. Dotted across the Caribbean, each resort has its own unique identity while staying true to the five-star Sandals ethos. But which one do you choose for your own personal celebration?

Here we look at a range of celebrations worthy of an unforgettable holiday and the perfect Sandals resorts to enjoy them in.

If you like your holidays to be as adventurous as they are relaxing, you’re sure to love the many activities offered at Sandals Grande Antigua and Sandals Saint Vincent. Explore the ocean bed with Sandals’s very own comprehensive PADI® Certified scuba diving programmes, and see beautiful reefs and shipwrecks up close alongside the professional supervision of PADI® certified staff and Newton dive boats. There’s also a wealth of water sports available including kayaking and paddleboarding or, if dry land is more your thing, why not spend your days playing beach volleyball, croquet, and tennis? All activities are included at either resort making your trip hassle free and flexible.

If you’re looking for somewhere to make a real occasion of a celebration or simply hide away on a romantic getaway, the Royal Barbados resort is one of Sandals’s most elegant options. The resort offers an extra level of extravagance that makes every day an unforgettable experience – from swim-up suites, Rolls Royce transfers from the airport when you stay in select suites, to a rooftop pool and restaurant, and catamaran cruises. There’s even a bowling alley if you fancy some good old-fashioned fun, or an alternative option for a date night.

On the beautiful island of Curaçao, lies the Sandals Royal Curaçao resort nestled within the heart of Leeward Antilles. The resort has plenty of opportunity for more intimate stays in its seaside butler bungalows complete with private pools and soaking tubs, while private cabanas and local tours leave you plenty of options for making an anniversary or birthday feel extra special. The parties around the pool or on the beach also make this a fun destination for celebrating a loved one.

Jamaica plays host to a number of Sandals resorts that make the perfect destination for honeymoons and group trips alike. The Sandals Royal Caribbean, for instance, offers over-the-water private villas complete with glass floors, hammocks and butler service, on the resort’s own private island. Ocean-view and swim-up rooms also offer a first-class experience for groups and friends spending time together. Alternatively, it’s hard to imagine a more romantic stay than at Sandals South Coast, where you can stay in spectacular, luxurious overwater villas arranged in the shape of a heart, offering an unmatched connection to the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea and rich marine life below.

Meanwhile, the Sandals Ochi resort in Jamaica offers the best of both worlds for honeymooners and party goers (or those wanting to enjoy both) with private butler villas, white sand beach, and 11 unique bars. Its vibrant atmosphere is ideal for those wanting to relax and party during their stay.

While every Sandals resort offers a luxurious experience, if you’re really looking to splurge and treat yourself, the re-imagined Sandals Royal Bahamian should be on your wishlist. Located in Nassau in the Bahamas, it has everything you could dream of from a holiday destination. Swim-up suites with butler service will help you leave the stresses and strains of everyday life behind, while pristine-white beaches, an award-winning Red Lane spa and 10 specialty restaurants will make your stay as enjoyable as it is relaxing. A short trip by boat will also take you to the Sandals private island with its own bar, restaurant and pool. Luxury adventure tours around the island will also make exploring the rest of the island easy and convenient.

St Lucia is one of the most beautiful and picturesque islands of the Caribbean, and our top destination for visiting with parents. Resorts such as the Grande St Lucian sit on their own peninsula with 360 degrees of volcanic mountains and crystal-clear ocean views to enjoy. As such, it’s the perfect place for making mum or dad feel truly appreciated. In addition to five grande pools, there’s also a Cap Estate Golf & Country Club for serious parental bonding time, not to mention a range of outdoor activities including reading road trips where guests meet children from the island, Catamaran sunset cruises, and carnival experiences.

Discover Sandals’s full range of Caribbean resorts here

What is the Chagos Islands deal with the UK that Trump has approved?

According to No 10, Donald Trump has “signed off” on the highly controversial Chagos Islands deal, drawing to a close the tortuous process of securing the future of the UK-US military base that has been operating on Diego Garcia since 1965.

It means formal sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) will be ceded to Mauritius, and comes as something of a shock to opponents who fully expected Mr Trump to reject the change. The long saga may be coming to a close…

Some of the basics are still unknown, especially as regards money, but the position will be that the BIOT – comprising the Chagos Islands and the military base – will be transferred to Mauritian sovereignty. In return, the UK has been promised a 99-year lease on the islands, with military use by the US part of the deal, in return for an annual fee. The fee has not yet been disclosed, but is thought to be some £90m per annum, inflation-linked.

The small matter of international law. Successive appeals by Mauritius to the UN and the International Court of Justice have left the status of the BIOT in doubt, generally favouring the Mauritian position.

The islands are plainly a colonial possession, acquired from France in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars. As such they are subject to UN resolutions and decolonisation. The islands were carved out of what was then the crown colony of Mauritius as part of its 1968 granting of independence, but such coercion also violated international law. The UK could carry on ignoring the situation, but this would leave the legal status of the joint base in doubt and thus at risk. In a worst-case scenario, Mauritius could transfer sovereignty of “their” islands to, say, China or India. Generally, civilised nations are expected to abide by international law.

They’ve been shabbily treated for decades, having been forcibly evicted to make way for the base in the 1960s. The diaspora principally lives in Mauritius, the Seychelles and near Gatwick Airport, and have had no vote on the deal. Foreign secretary David Lammy insists they have been consulted throughout.

Not quite. Trump has approved it but the formality of Mauritius and the UK signing the agreement has yet to take place, after which the treaty will need to be approved by parliament and all the costs and clauses will be made public. Given the government’s majority and the backing of the White House, the deal is bound to be ratified.

The Conservatives and Reform UK describe it as such, and object to public money needed for vital services being transferred to Mauritius – but that seems to be the price for settling this long-running dispute. What financial contribution, if any, the US will make is not known. In the current wider context of defence and economic tensions between the UK and the US, the Chagos leasing costs might be considered a useful sweetener in the national interest.

No. Those few empire loyalists who feel passionately about the issue are a minority and would never vote Labour anyway, some because they haven’t forgiven Clement Attlee for giving up India. The often exaggerated cost of the lease (adding inflation over a century to invent a bogus cost in today’s money) is no more than a right-wing debating point. The Conservatives are compromised on this argument because they were in talks to “surrender” the BIOT for years, and no one thinks the deal can be reversed unless the Americans demand it.

It doesn’t feel like it, and the government says not. Nonetheless, there are parallels in their disputed colonial status. Before the 1982 Falklands War, a transfer and leaseback arrangement was freely raised by Britain as a way of ending the arguments in the South Atlantic.

The big shift in both these cases has been Brexit, with one EU member, Spain, having a vital interest in steering EU diplomacy towards regaining Gibraltar and a friendlier stance towards the Argentinian claim on the Falklands. The UK can no longer rely on the EU to back it up at the UN and elsewhere; indeed, the Brexit treaty gives Spain a special role with regard to Gibraltar, and the territory’s land and air border arrangements still haven’t been finally sorted out.

Like it or not, the sun has not fully set on the British empire.

There is now only a slim chance that a global recession can be averted

Most presidents of the United States seek to build. Donald Trump seeks only to do the opposite – ironically, given his history as a prominent property developer. In the circumstances, announcing a series of devastating differential “reciprocal” tariffs on the US’s major trading partners in the charming environs of the White House Rose Garden seemed rather incongruous. Then again, as the true enormity of what is at hand became clear, the wind got up and there was a sense of a storm coming. That was far more fitting.

His first days in office were marked by wild executive orders inflicted on the federal government and on the constitution of the United States. His whirlwind continues – although the defeat of a Trumpian judge in an election in Wisconsin is perhaps a small sign that the US is growing weary of the efforts of the president and his noisy Svengali, Elon Musk.

In the name of what seems a futile search for peace in Ukraine, the president has also applied his nihilism to the US’s traditional alliances, not least Nato, where he has chosen to abuse friends and allies while simultaneously flattering and appeasing Vladimir Putin. To astonishment, the US has told former partners, from Canada to Ukraine to Japan, that the US no longer has a strategic interest in their survival as independent sovereign states, and in any case no longer shares their values. Matters are now purely transactional.

The international rules-based order that took eight decades to construct and won the Cold War has been comprehensively abandoned within 80 days of Mr Trump’s inauguration, exceeding even the worst of fears. It is scarcely believable, but tragically true that the president seeks to annex Greenland and absorb Canada.

The result has been to plunge the US and the world into a state of permanent crisis. Having tested the fabric of American political life and the international order, the president is now rapidly reaching the final stages in dismantling the post-war economic order, too. As with the military and diplomatic alliances that protected the US and its partners for so long, so too with the institutions and policies that helped propel the world to unprecedented progress and prosperity.

Decades of painstaking work to grow international trade and establish a rules-based system eventually overseen by the World Trade Organisation are being undone by the stroke of a presidential Sharpie. It is a revolution, and it has already wrought chaos in financial markets and the corporate world.

In the space of less than one hour, interspersed with the usual rambling digressions, Mr Trump visited enormous economic hardship on what he would call “friend and foe” alike. China, predictably, came in for the most vindictive treatment – a blanket tariff of 34 per cent, but the EU, scrambling to defend itself from Russia, has been whacked with a 20 per cent tax. The British, let off with a 10 per cent charge, need not feel too smug – the global trade slowdown this will trigger will hit the UK’s feeble growth prospects hard.

With his much-trumpeted “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, Mr Trump seeks nothing less than the reversal of globalisation and the disruption of highly efficient integrated supply chains and markets in the name of a senseless zero-sum economic nationalism.

All the lessons of history and practical economics are abandoned in the cause of crude protectionism – specifically mercantilism, in which politicians such as Mr Trump, rather than markets, determine what is made where and by whom.

Mr Trump, a child of his times whose formative years were marked by the rise of German and Japanese industrial power, seeks to return the US to its status as a great manufacturing nation, even though other nations build cars and make steel better and more cheaply. It is a fundamentally atavistic vision of the US’s economic future, and it will serve Americans badly.

So far from being the disaster zone he so often describes, the US as a whole has never had it so good. Its economy has lately been growing strongly, and in most places living standards are high and rising. The problem has been the lack of care and attention given to the casualties of globalisation. Mr Trump blames foreigners – who else? – for the dislocations caused, and sincerely believes, absurdly, that the US can be self-sufficient in almost everything.

Early on in his first term, he wrote “TRADE IS BAD” on the top of a draft speech for an international economic summit. That simple and simplistic belief is the key to what is befalling the global economy now.

America First is becoming America Only, which might be fine for Americans if it was true. But, unlike the world of real estate deals, trade need not be a zero-sum game. Just as the gradual easing of trade restrictions drove productivity and economic growth higher, so it is also the grim historical experience that no one wins trade wars, and they can lead to real wars.

Tariffs will make Americans poorer, make businesses less competitive, and the retaliation by the EU, China and others will cut off valuable export markets, particularly for farmers and the oil industry. The import taxes cannot simultaneously yield the vast revenues predicted by Mr Trump – paid if goods are still imported in the same volumes – and restore US jobs, if there is no change in consumer behaviour and no switching of purchases to buy American, which means lower imports and tariff revenues.

As things stand, it seems too late to try to reason with Mr Trump. The only hope is that out of chaos will emerge a new order and, through negotiations, the US and its major trading partners can end up with tariffs that are actually lower than before. Restraint is required if tit-for-tat tariffs are not to escalate to absurd and catastrophically damaging levels.

There’s a slim chance that a global trade recession can be avoided, and even that a new settlement can benefit all sides. At the conclusion of his remarks the president hinted that this initiative could be the beginning of a more benign process of tariff reduction. Certainly, something akin to the peace process that follows a real war will be needed to restore order.