Halle Berry is no stranger to late night TV. The actress and social media star is a regular fixture on talk shows, mostly because she has great stories and is always up for anything. She proved that first part again this past week on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon when she got to talking about the Olympics. Fallon himself was seen throughout the Games and did commentary on the Closing Ceremony, but apparently she has him beat. Berry carried the Olympic Torch ahead of the Paris Games, and I’m a little rattled at one of her admissions.
You know the torch people pass off and carry from one host city to another? Well, apparently it’s not nearly as sturdy as you’d think. When Berry was asked about carrying it, its weight was the first thing she talked about. Here’s what she said…
It’s not that heavy. I thought it was gonna be heavy, but it wasn’t. It’s light.
Fallon pushed her further during their interview and asked if it was made out of plastic. She said it’s not but that it doesn’t have nearly as much weight as you’d guess. That’s surprising, given how solid it looks on television. She never estimated its actual weight during the interview, but I did a little research and found each torch is designed differently and varies based on the specific Olympics. All of the torches, however, are fairly light, and the one from Paris only weighed 1.5 kilos or 3.3 pounds, if you live in the States.
It must have been a tremendous honor for Berry to be a part of history and carry the flame, but she admitted during the Fallon interview that it wasn’t her first dream. She apparently grew up wanting to be a gymnast and had a snarky little comment about what happened…
I dreamed of being a gymnast. I was supposed to be Simone Biles, but she beat me to it.
Biles, of course, once again captivated the world with a fantastic performance during the Women’s Gymnastics Events. She won the All-Around, the vault and the team competition alongside her fellow female gymnasts from The United States. She was, by far, the most successful gymnast in Paris, but viewers were also captivated by some others, most notably her main rival Rebeca Andrade from Brazil, as well as breakout pommel horse star Stephen Nedoroscik, Tokyo All-Around Champion Suni Lee, medalist Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles, who is still in the midst of a legal tug of war over her disputed bronze medal thanks to a gymnastics rule that needs to be changed ASAP.
On the whole, the Olympics drew a huge crowd for NBC. Ratings were almost double what they were for the Covid-ridled Tokyo Olympics, and across all its platforms, more than 23 billion minutes were streamed. Numerous events saw a big spike in interest, though not surprisingly, the gold medal game in men’s basketball proved to be a shining moment, as more than 20 million tuned in, making it the most watched since 1996 in Atlanta.
The Olympics will return to The United States in 2028. At this point, we have no idea if Halle Berry will once again carry the Olympic Torch, but it’s very likely we’ll see numerous celebrities involved, as it’s being held in Los Angeles. Tom Cruise participated in the Closing Ceremonies in Paris, and his theatrics feel like just a small taste of what we’re going to get in four years. I can’t wait.
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