Browns QB Deshaun Watson and longtime girlfriend Jilly Anais get engaged
Deshaun Watson's future with Cleveland Browns might be in doubt. However, another part of his future is more secure.
Watson and his longtime girlfriend, Jilly Anais, announced in a joint Instagram post on Sunday that they got engaged. The caption reads “Mrs. Watson loading …” while showing off Anais wearing a large diamond ring as Watson hugs and looks at her.
Watson commented on the post, writing “MORE GLORY” followed by a prayer emoji.
Watson and Anais have been dating since 2019, after first meeting in Los Angeles. They are both 29. Anais — who has nearly 2.5 million followers on social media — is a singer, actress and cookbook author.
The couple stayed together amid accusations in 2021 and '22 by more than two dozen women that Watson sexually assaulted and harassed them during massage therapy sessions in Houston, when he played for the Texans. Two grand juries declined to indict him and he has settled civil lawsuits in all but one of the cases.
Watson was suspended by the NFL for the first 11 games of the 2022 season after being traded by the Texans to the Browns and was fined $5 million for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.
He may miss the entire 2025 season after rupturing his right Achilles tendon for the second time in three months in January. He originally injured it during an Oct. 20, 2024, loss to the Bengals.
The Browns have reworked his contract twice in three months to gain some financial flexibility. Cleveland has insurance that protects the contract and could get some cap relief from the NFL if he is out for the season.
Watson has played in only 19 games since the Browns acquired him and signed him to a fully guaranteed $230 million contract. He made just six starts in 2023 before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury and started seven last year before the Achilles tendon injury.
Cleveland, which went 3-14 in 2024, has the second pick in April’s NFL draft. It recently hosted Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Miami’s Cam Ward.
The Browns also acquired Kenny Pickett in a trade with Philadelphia last week at the start of free agency and hosted free agent Russell Wilson for a visit last Thursday.
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‘Leaving Neverland’ director details thousands of death threats from Michael Jackson fans
The director of “Leaving Neverland” and its upcoming sequel — both about the men who accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them as children — says he’s received thousands of death threats from fans of the late King of Pop.
British filmmaker Dan Reed says he has “kept company with very violent people for a very long time,” as he told The Guardian in an interview at his office, the location of which had to be kept secret.
“I’ve had murderers try to find me. I’ve had people threaten to shoot me who are armed. I’ve been threatened many, many times,” Reed said.
Though these threats have come in many forms, the director says he only gives credence to the ones that have been “delivered face to face” or have come from people trying to track down his home address.
“People in China sending me emails? I don’t take so seriously. They’re going to have to get on a plane,” said Reed, who has also helmed documentaries on the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the court case against Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
But, as The Guardian makes clear, the threats against his life have only really come from Jackson fans, following 2019’s “Leaving Neverland,” which earned Reed an Emmy Award.
The two-part HBO documentary centers on the sexual abuse allegations levied by James Safechuck and Wade Robson, who were children when they say Jackson leveraged his star power to groom them.
Jackson, who died in 2009 at age 50, was first accused of sexual abuse in 1993 by then 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. Jackson reportedly settled the suit the following year for more than $20 million, and prosecutors declined to file charges in a subsequent criminal investigation.
In a separate case in 2003, Jackson was charged with child molestation, only to be acquitted in 2005. His estate continues to deny all allegations against the late “Thriller” singer.
“Jackson got away with it for so long because he normalized the presence of little boys in his life,” Reed told the Daily News in 2019.
“Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson” traces the years since the release of its controversial predecessor — over which Jackson’s estate sued HBO for $100 million — and the intense public scrutiny Safechuck and Robson have faced as they’ve pursued their case.
The second installment, premiering March 18 on YouTube’s Real Stories, also sees Safechuck and Robson preparing for the 2026 trial against Jackson’s companies. Reed is also planning on a third installment to cover the trial itself.
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Judge grants modified protective order in Lively, Baldoni case
NEW YORK — A federal New York judge has granted a modified protective order in Blake Lively’s ongoing legal battle with Justin Baldoni, the “It Ends With Us” director and co-star she has accused of sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman on Thursday granted the protective order to ensure “the confidentiality of certain nonpublic and confidential material” that could be found during discovery, according to court documents viewed by the Daily News.
The protective order does not grant “blanket protections on all disclosures,” but rather applies merely to “limited information or items that are entitled … to confidential treatment.”
Liman attributed the order to the knowledge that discovery in this case will pose potential harm to those involved if confidential documents or information are publicly disclosed.
The” Attorneys’ Eyes Only” designation will only be attributed to information that falls under trade secrets, such as confidential business or creative projects; security measures or medical information, as well as “highly personal intimate information” not “directly relevant” to allegations in the case.
That designation will also extend to nonpublic photographs or recordings of family or other personal relationships — the latter likely affecting texts between Lively and pal Taylor Swift.
Liman said he’s unlikely to seal or make confidential any discovery material introduced in evidence at trial, and further stated the protective order will extend beyond the end of the case. Within a month of the case’s conclusion all relevant confidential or “Attorneys’ Eyes Only” material — and their copies — are ordered to be destroyed or returned to the person who produced them. Anyone who doesn’t respect the order could be found in contempt of court.
On Dec. 31, Lively sued Baldoni, who simultaneously filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against the New York Times.
In January, he filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane, also accusing them of civil extortion.
The order will “ensure the free flow of discovery material without any risk of witness intimidation or harm to any individual’s security,” a Lively spokesman told People in a statement, adding that the actress will now “ move forward in the discovery process to obtain even more of the evidence that will prove her claims in court.”
From combined wire services