Producer-turned-Paramount executive Pam Abdy finds herself embroiled in a situation straight out of a "Sopranos" episode.
The exec veep of production and "Garden State" producer was caught on wiretap with New Jersey mobster Joseph Perna discussing the multibillion-dollar illegal gambling ring that he helped run.
Perna was arrested Tuesday and was one of 32 people charged in connection with the massive gambling operation, which reportedly has ties to the Bloods gang.
Abdy, a New Jersey native, became tainted by the scandal Thursday when news broke in the New York press that her conversations with Perna were part of a 195-page affidavit filed by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office in the case.
"When I first saw this, I thought it was a horrible mistake," said Abdy's lawyer Marc Agnifilo. "Normally, people who are not part of an investigation are not named in an affidavit."
But Abdy's name made its way into the documents because she is the niece of another man charged in the case, Martin Taccetta.
Agnifilo said Abdy once dated Perna but is no longer romantically involved with him. "There were a number of phone calls between Pam and Joseph that were purely social in nature," he said. "It would be a horrible thing if everyone you talked to ended up in an affidavit." STEWART, COLBERT TO RETURN JAN. 7
"Truthiness" is coming back to latenight, albeit without writers.
Comedy Central confirmed Thursday that its latenight skeins "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will return to the air on Jan. 7, two months after going dark on the day the Writers Guild of America strike against the major studios and nets began Nov. 5.
"Daily Show" and "Colbert" will resume production a week after the skedded return of NBC's Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, CBS' David Letterman and Craig Ferguson and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel. Their shows will also proceed without writers, unless Letterman's Worldwide Pants banner succeeds in securing an interim agreement with the guild to allow scribes for his and Ferguson's show to return to work (Daily Variety, Dec. 17).More than one option
But the prospect of working without writers is a much trickier proposition for "Daily Show" and "Colbert" -- both Stewart and Colbert are WGA members -- than it is for the other latenighters, because their formats are so script- and monologue-driven. Colbert plays a Bill O'Reilly-esque character who rails against headlines and topical issues ("Truthiness" is the character's coinage for handling factual inconsistencies in his positions) in satirical bits that are generally tightly scripted.
"We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence," Stewart and Colbert said in a joint statement issued Thursday afternoon.
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