Oprah Winfrey to Interview South Carolina Mom Who Murdered Her Two Young Sons

Oprah Winfrey to Interview South Carolina Mom Who Murdered Her Two Young Sons

"Oprah's Next Chapter" will feature an exclusive interview Sunday, April 1, with Shaquan Duley at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Detention Center; Winfrey will also speak with Duley's mom, sister and 7-year-old daughter.

Oprah Winfrey with Shaquan Duley at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Detention Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Oprah Winfrey has secured an exclusive interview with Shaquan Duley, a mother who confessed to murdering her two young sons, as part of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

In her first television interview, airing Sunday, April 1 (9-10 p.m. ET/PT), taking place one week before her sentence is announced, Duley will sit face to face with Winfrey behind bars at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Detention Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina.  Duley has been held without bond for nearly two years waiting to learn her fate.

During her interview with Duley, Winfrey asks the mother why she killed her two innocent children, and also talks to Duley’s mother Helen and sister Adrian, who originally told their story to Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show in September 2010 one month after Duley’s arrest.  Winfrey will also meet and talk to Saniya, Duley’s 7-year-old daughter.

According to her confession and police reports, 29-year-old Duley shared a home with her mother Helen, and younger sister Adrian in 2010.  After an argument, Duley stormed out of her house taking her two sons, 2-year-old Devean and 18-month-old Ja’van, but leaving her 5 year old daughter Saniya behind.  Police say Duley checked into an Orangeburg motel, and in the early morning hours of August 16, 2010, she smothered her sons to death by placing her hands over their mouth and nose.

Then, police say, Duley buckled her sons’ bodies in their car seats and drove to a rural boat ramp 15 miles away, driving her car into the river where it began to sink. Once the car was submerged she exited the vehicle, leaving the bodies of her two sons inside.  Duley then flagged down a passing motorist claiming she had an accident and her children were underwater.  When police arrived, they say they were suspicious of Duley’s story as there were no signs of a crash.  Frantically, divers searched for the car and ultimately recovered the bodies of the two young boys.  Investigators say Duley confessed to the murders and the cover up.  On March 16, 2012, during a plea hearing, Duley pled guilty to two counts of murder and begged for forgiveness from her family, the community and the judge. Duley now faces 60 years to life in prison for the murders.

Before Oprah's Next Chapter launched, Oprah talked about two other interviews she is determined to land: Susan Smith and O.J. Simpson.

“I have a dream of O.J. Simpson confessing to me,” said Winfrey to voluble cheers from the crowd at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center. “And I am going to make that happen people.”

“I don’t just want the interview,” she continued. “I want the interview on the condition that you are ready, Mr. Simpson.”

Similar to Duley's case, Susan Smith was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for murdering her two young sons, 3-year-old Michael Daniel Smith and 14-month-old Alexander Tyler Smith. Smith had previously reported a black man had stolen her car and kidnapped her sons, before confessing nine days later that she let her car roll into a nearby lake with her children inside.

Oprah's Next Chapter is a new primetime series on Winfrey's OWN, currently the most-watched program on Winfrey's struggling network. The series features Winfrey stepping out of Harpo Studios for her in-depth interviews and conversations with newsmakers, celebrities, and real-world families. Winfrey recently interviewed Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, on the show -- and drew in a record 3.5 million viewers. Oprah's Next Chapter airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

OWN debuted on January 1, 2011, in approximately 77 million homes on what was the Discovery Health Channel. The network has famously struggled since its launch, eliminating 30 staff members in a recent network restructuring as well as canceling Rosie O'Donnell's five-month-old talk show. Analysts estimate that OWN could lose $142.9 million this year. 

What we’d like to see from Mad Men season 5

What we’d like to see from Mad Men season 5

With AMC’s Mad Men returning this week, we look ahead to what we’d like to see more of in season 5…

Mad Men’s season 5 promos strutted onto our tellies with a list of words: style, confidence, secrecy, debauchery, lust, deception... nouns that, with a little fiddling, could be made into Seven Dwarfs-style names for Don, Peggy, Joan, Pete, Roger et al. Except of course that one of the joys of Mad Men is that none of its characters can be summed up in a word; they’re Russian dolls, they’re hateful yet sympathetic, they’re despicable but magnetic. And much more importantly: they’re back.

Away from our screens since October 2010 while showrunner Matthew Weiner tussled with the network over budget and episode length (thankfully, he won), the superlative Mad Men returns this week for its fifth season, and here’s our wish list for the episodes to come…

Season four ended in October 1965, but it’s not so far been Weiner’s style to pick up a new series exactly where he left off. Orienting yourself in the first episode of a new Mad Men season is now something of a tradition, having to extrapolate how much time has passed by comparing haircuts and seeing how tall Bobby Draper’s gotten.

The post-1965 period brings with it a number of possibilities for the show, chief amongst them being the Vietnam War, anti-Vietnam protests and the draft, though race-riots, Thunderball, Reagan’s burgeoning political career, the first Rolling Stone magazine and (for Lane Pryce perhaps), England’s World Cup football victory could all get a look-in.

In season one she did the twist, in season three she declared, “My name is Peggy Olsen and I want to smoke some marijuana”, and in season four she fell in with a group of arty, politicised hipsters. Following that trajectory, by season seven Peggy should be a Woodstock flowerchild wearing nothing but nipple paint, but before she gets there, we’d like to see more of counter-culture Peggy, specifically seeing her reconcile her position as an evil ad writer amongst her group of revolutionary friends.

Also on the wish list for Peggy is a continuation of the entente she and Joan reached by the end of the last season (what a formidable pair, and no, I’m not talking about Joan’s… oh never mind), and a few more scenes of her saving the company at a pitch and leaving the boys behind in her wake.

Think back a little. How many of those ground-breaking presidential speeches Sam and Toby wrote in The West Wing did we actually hear? A line or two maybe, and some post-applause dissection, but never the whole thing.

Mad Men stands apart from series like it by actually showing the work done at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The scenes are littered with storyboards, print and TV ads for Sugarberry Ham, Glo-Coat floor wax or Patio Diet Cola, alongside real ads from the period. It wouldn't be the same without them.

If only Esther Rantzen’s ChildLine had existed in the early sixties, perhaps little Sally Beth Draper could have benefitted from a friendly ear in the darkest days of her childhood, but sadly, poor Sally’s only confidante is creepy Glen.

Last season saw Sally engage in a self-administered haircut and some public self-abuse (well, who could blame her, The Man from U.N.C.L.E's Illya Kuryakin is sex on a blonde stick), so heavens knows what she’ll be up to now she’s a pre-teen. One positive repercussion of Don’s snap-decision to propose to his secretary is the potential good Megan ‘Maria Von Trapp’ Calvet could do for troubled Sally.

Call me cruel, but there is something intriguing about watching little Sally Draper being slowly transformed from child into ticking time bomb. Let’s just hope the series is still around in about 1970, to catch the fall-out from her inevitable explosion.

Now that Lucky Strike has left SCDP in the lurch, there’s no reason (apart from the company’s impending bankruptcy) that art director Sal can’t return to the fold. At the very least, we’d love to see Peggy run into Sal at a ‘happening’ to find him now a happily out movie director running with the Cassavetes crowd and entertaining everyone with his Ann-Margret impression.

This being Mad Men though, a show notoriously stingy with its happy endings, Peggy’s much more likely to trip over Sal slumped on the floor shooting up in the Stonewall Inn...

Not only does Roger Sterling gets all the best sardonic quips and one-liners in Mad Men, he’s also the author of a memoir startling in its self-obsession (and in its revelations about Ida Blankenship’s youthful, ahem, passions): Sterling’s Gold. I don’t know about you, but I could stand a second instalment of Sterling’s maudlin rich boy navel-gazing.

From the witty: Peggy responding to the statement, “Your boyfriend doesn’t own your vagina” with a quick retort worthy of a copywriter, “No, but he’s renting it.” Closely matched by Don’s comment to Pete that “Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich”.

To the visionary: Bert Cooper’s eulogy for Mrs Blankenship “She was born in 1898 in a barn, she died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut”

And the wildly metaphorical: Don’s comment about the mouse in The Suitcase, that “There’s a way out of this room we don’t know about”. You said it, man.

We’ve had the photocopier excitement of season two and the vending machine of season four, so we’re thinking it must almost be time for… the Xerox Magnatax Telecopier! “Mail letters over the phone”, its 1966 ads proudly declared (the verb ‘to fax’ being a recent addition perhaps?).

Imagine the possibilities: Don could still fax the office taglines even when he’s on his annual lost month in California, Pete could fax entitled “Why me?” whines to fellow Dartmouth alumni and Joan could fax overseas hubby Greg baby pictures: “Huh, he’s got an awful lot of silver hair for a 3 month old…”

Someone to watch an episode of The Twilight Zone and/or Star Trek

Star Trek made its debut on US TV in 1966, so technically season five would be perfect timing for a Trek-episode (we’re thinking Glen or Sally might become fans?), while it’d have to be a re-run of The Twilight Zone if my calculations are correct.

Who didn’t watch Conrad Hilton’s season three Mad Men speeches about building something meaningful without thinking of the somewhat less-wholesome modern legacy being left by the hotelier’s granddaughter?

The power of Mad Men has long been its ability to comment on modern society through the veil of the 1960s, not to mention the steady drip-drip-drip of dramatic irony running through its scripts. One of the show’s best tricks is to have its audience look depressively from then to now and ask ourselves, what’s really changed?

Advertising is based on happiness according to Don Draper, so it’s ironic he’s granted precious little of it by the show’s writers. Season four in particular showed Don not as a suave Bond-figure but alone, drunk, and fading into irrelevancy. Like many of the men around him, Don’s alcoholism and failed marriage had caught up with him for a season-long hangover.

Could the rug-pull executed in the season finale, which saw Don drop Dr Faye in favour of secretary Megan, finally mean happiness for Draper? Cynical though it sounds, I’m afraid I’m with Joan and Peggy on this one.

Oddly, this is a request that came from my husband. I’ve decided not to pursue the matter.

Mad Men returns to AMC at 9pm on Sunday March 25th and comes Sky Atlantic at 9pm on March 27th.

Titanic episode 1 review

Titanic episode 1 review

After seeing the first episode, we can now comfortably assume no Kraken, psychic space squid or warrior princesses will be popping up in Julian Fellowes’ new four-part Titanic series, so why the review on Den of Geek? Well, we have it on good authority (that of Outcasts creator Ben Richards to be precise) that there are no geeks like Titanic geeks, hence our taking a look at the Sunday night drama.

If that’s not good enough qualification for you, then who should pop up in the Titanic cast but new Doctor Who companion Jenna-Louise Coleman, whose appearance means we can treat the review as Who-related research if that helps. Coleman plays a pretty maid who slips in and out of the ship’s first-class cabins maintaining fresh-faced chirpiness in the face of both cocky Italians and ladies in extraordinarily large hats. She’ll be able to cope with the TARDIS no problem.

Speaking of extraordinarily large hats, we now know that the iceberg must only have been half the story; the weight of the marvellously sized headwear sported by the ladies of first class must have played a part at least in why the Titanic went down.

The weight of dramatic irony in the script is responsible for at least half of why the first episode of this new drama sinks. Characters from steerage to the captain’s table spend the first half hour going merrily around the Titanic taunting the gods of fate with lines like “We can’t be in any real danger, not on this ship” and “Nobody’s going anywhere near the water, to be sure” (lots of them are Irish, you see). It’s enough to have you wishing the iceberg would turn up sooner.

This opening episode introduces the Earl and Countess of Manton (Linus Roache and Geraldine Somerville), he a philandering nobleman, she an insufferable snob, and their daughter Lady Georgiana (Perdita Weeks). Lady G is about the closest thing Titanic has thus far to a warrior princess, what with her suffragettism and love of “writers and rebels angry at their fellow-man’s injustices”, though even she soon drops the sisterhood in favour of a quick fumble with a wealthy American whom she all-of-a-sudden can’t live without once the water level starts rising.

The water level seems to rise rather speedily for a four part drama (the first cry of “We’ve hit an iceberg” happens just half an hour in), until Fellowes’ multi-perspective  conceit is revealed. Next week the clock rewinds for us to watch the same period focusing on the background characters of this week’s instalment. In episode two, we presume, the snobby Countess will just be a member of the supporting cast, a wonderfully large hat hovering around in the back of the shot like a crinoline UFO…

The early-stage problem with this potentially interesting way of telling the story is that we’ve scarcely had time to say ‘How d’you do’ to any of the characters before we’re asked to care whether they meet a muddy death or not. Call me cold-hearted, but save the charms of The Catherine Tate Show’s Lee Ross, the always-great Toby Jones, and - at a push - Big Suze, I wasn’t much fussed if any of this week’s lot made it.

Fellowes’ characters, so far, are thinly drawn and too frequently mouthpieces for his chosen theme: national prejudice and class tensions. I’m not asking for mumblecore realism, but listening to Toby Jones’ character’s wife (Maria Doyle Kennedy) give stagey speeches about Anglo-Irish relations while she’s putting on her earrings is more distancing than engaging.

One positive is that the CG ship was rendered nicely enough, and won’t be shown up too greatly by the tarted-up 3D version of the James Cameron film come release date.

The galloping pace is a necessary evil - not all dramas can afford to move at Mad Men’s glacial creep -  and the show has set itself a deadline by timing its final episode to go out exactly on the 100 year anniversary of the ship sinking, but I found myself wanting either a lot more Titanic, or none at all. For a sea-faring series, this opening episode was altogether too dry.

'The Voice' UK, 'Britain's Got Talent' launch with colossal ratings

'The Voice' UK, 'Britain's Got Talent' launch with colossal ratings

New BBC talent show The Voice UK launched with impressive ratings last night.

BBC One's new singing contest averaged 8.43m (37.6%) between 7pm and 8.20pm, peaking with 9.6m (42.3%) at 7.45pm.

Notably, The Voice has premiered with a much higher audience than The X Factor in 2004 and Britain's Got Talent in 2007.

Britain's Got Talent kicked off its sixth series with 9.43m (39.2%) from 8pm, adding 567k (2.5%) on ITV1 +1 for Simon Cowell's return to the judging panel.

The ITV talent show peaked with 10.93m (44.9%) as the first auditions show came to a close.

During the pair's much-anticipated 20-minute clash between 8pm and 8.20pm, The Voice UK easily came out on top with 8.9m (36.2%) against Got Talent's 6.71m (27.3%).

Moved to a later slot to make way for Talent, Take Me Out held up well with a decent 4.48m (20.8%) at 9.20pm (+1: 227k/1.4%), then The Jonathan Ross Show ended with 2.75m (16.8%).

Harry Hill's TV Burp went out with a whimper, drawing 3.37m (15.1%) for its 'last ever' edition at 7.30pm (+1: 329k/1.4%), prior to which 3.64m (18.6%) watched All Star Family Fortunes.

Meanwhile, BBC One's Total Wipeout returned with 3.13m (18.1%) at 6pm. In It To Win It (4.2m/17.6%) and Casualty (4.71m/21%) aired later on.

In an extremely close race, BBC One got the upper hand in primetime with 25.9% over ITV1's 25.8% (+1: 1.4%).

Davina McCall's Million Pound Drop Live started a new run with 1.28m (6.4%) from 9.20pm, but Channel 4 still could not overtake 5 as CSI: NY gave a solid 1.43m (7%) in the 10pm hour.

That meant Channel 5 claimed third place with 4.5% (+1: 0.2%), ahead of Channel 4's 4.1% (+1: 0.6%) and BBC Two's 4%.

ITV2's Britain's Got More Talent opened with a respectable 663k (3.1%), adding 156k (0.9%) on timeshift, while Take Me Out: The Gossip had 456k (2.6%).

GLAAD Honors Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, ‘Pariah’, CNN and ABC At NYC Event

GLAAD Honors Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, ‘Pariah’, CNN and ABC At NYC Event

Prolific musical producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron were among showbiz and news professionals honored Saturday night at GLAAD Media Awards celebration in New York City. Anderson Cooper 360 and ABC World News With Dianne Sawyer were also recognized for news segments. A list of winners at the New York event follows. Additional honorees will be announced April 21 in Los Angeles and June 2 in San Francisco.

    VITO RUSSO AWARD
    Craig Zadan & Neil Meron, executive producers of Smash

    SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD
    Katy Butler, openly gay 17-year-old anti-bullying advocate

    OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE
    Pariah (Focus Features)

    OUTSTANDING TV MOVIE OR MINI-SERIES
    Cinema Verite (HBO)

    OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM – NEWSMAGAZINE
    The ‘Sissy Boy’ Experiments, Anderson Cooper 360

    OUTSTANDING TV JOURNALISM SEGMENT
    Battle Against Bullying, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer

    Related: 23rd GLAAD Film/TV Awards Nominations

    OUTSTANDING LOS ANGELES THEATRE
    No Word in Guyanese for Me by Wendy Graf

    OUTSTANDING NEW YORK THEATRE
    The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures by Tony Kushner

    OUTSTANDING NEW YORK THEATER/ Off-Off Broadway
    Southern Comfort, book and lyrics by Dan Collins, music by Julianne Wick Davis

    OUTSTANDING REALITY PROGRAM
    Dancing with the Stars (ABC)

    OUTSTANDING TALK SHOW EPISODE
    “Coming Out on the Oprah Show: 25 Years of Unforgettable Guests

    OUTSTANDING MUSIC ARTIST
    Lady Gaga, Born This Way

Simon Cowell admits 'Voice' UK is "wake-up call" for 'Got Talent'

Simon Cowell admits 'Voice' UK is "wake-up call" for 'Got Talent'

Simon Cowell has admitted that he returned to Britain's Got Talent to ensure its dominance in the ratings.

The Syco boss told The Sun on Sunday that the emergence of BBC One's The Voice has been a "wake-up call" for the ITV format.

The 52-year-old recalled: "Knowing [The Voice] was on the horizon, I got all of our team over to America last year.

"I said, 'We're in a completely different place, this show has got to be the greatest series ever produced'.

"If someone beats or competes, it means you've got to work better. And in a funny way the viewers benefit.

"I thought I'd make a difference because I was in the mood to do it."

Reserving special praise for Amanda Holden, he added: "I couldn't do it without my Amanda. Alesha [Dixon], I've been after her for a long time, and David [Walliams] I've wanted on the show for two years."

Cowell, in a fresh dig at the BBC, claimed: "They wanted to have a pop at Britain's Got Talent because it's too popular and they don't like The X Factor being as popular as it is."

'Voice' UK singer Jessica Hammond blasts 'X Factor' treatment

'Voice' UK singer Jessica Hammond blasts 'X Factor' treatment

Jessica Hammond, a singer on The Voice UK, has spoken out in criticism against The X Factor's treatment of her.

Hammond, who opted for a place on Team Jessie J in last night's show, revealed that she unsuccessfully auditioned twice for the ITV talent contest.

She told the Daily Star: "The Voice is a completely different show to The X Factor.

"The BBC were really kind, and the production team were really kind, and that does make a massive difference. On The X Factor, I had to arrive at 7am and didn't leave until 11pm.

"I was stuck in a room all day without food or water. I was just sat around waiting all day. I wasn't given a proper warm-up or the help the BBC gave me."

She went on: "On The Voice, you are given all the help and encouragement to perform well. It was an incredible moment when all four judges turned around.

"The judges on The X Factor said I was an average singer and my performance was just average. They have their opinions and I wasn't on top form that day. But they didn't make me want to give up."

Hammond added: "In fact, I went straight home and wrote a song about it called 'Try Again Tomorrow'. On The X Factor, I couldn't perform with my guitar, and I think that made a big difference."