Names and faces
■ Country singer Lainey Wilson is a fan favorite at this year’s CMT Music Awards, where she’s the leading nominee including for Video of the Year. The “Heart Like a Truck” singer earned four nominations Wednesday ahead of the April 2 show airing on CBS. Other leading nominees are Cody Johnson, Kane Brown and first-timer Jelly Roll, who each have three nods. Brown and Kelsea Ballerini return to host the show from Austin, Texas. There are 16 nominees for the show’s top prize, video of the year, a category that Carrie Underwood holds the record in with 25 awards. She’s nominated again for her video “Hate My Heart” and will also perform. The winners are selected by fan voting, which is open now at vote.cmt.com. Wynonna Judd earned two nominations in the performance of the year category, one with her late mother, Naomi, for their last performance together on last year’s show and one for her performance of “The Rose” with Brandi Carlile during a memorial show after Naomi Judd’s death.
■ Actor Nazanin Boniadi on Wednesday urged the world to back the protests in her native Iran calling for women’s rights and political change, saying despots fear nothing “more than a free and politically active woman.” Boniadi said she hopes people will sign a petition she’s supporting accusing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Iran of committing “gender apartheid” with their policies targeting women. “These systems of oppressing women, of dehumanizing women, are based on strengthening and keeping these entrenched systems of power in place,” she said. “So we have to legally recognize this as gender apartheid in order to be able to overcome it.” Boniadi, who as a young child left Tehran with her family for England following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has used her fame as an actor — in the series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Amazon Prime and in feature films — to highlight what’s happening back in Iran. Since September, the government has faced mass protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being detained by the country’s morality police. In the time since, activists say more than 500 people have been killed and more than 19,000 detained in a security force crackdown. “The thing that is unprecedented is we’re seeing 12-year-old girls, schoolgirls, come out into the streets saying, ‘We don’t want an Islamic Republic,’” Boniadi, 42, said. “The courage that takes is astounding. And that courage has been contagious.”