LOS ANGELES (AP) — Let the office debates begin — John Krasinski is People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive for 2024.
The magazine announced the actor-writer-director as its pick Tuesday night during “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Krasinski starred in “The Office” before launching the “Quiet Place” franchise and leading the action series “Jack Ryan.” He joked in an interview with the magazine that he’s hoping his wife, fellow actor Emily Blunt, makes good on a promise to plaster the cover as wallpaper at their home.
He takes the mantle from last year’s honoree, Patrick Dempsey.
Krasinski, 45, told People that his immediate reaction to the honor was “just immediate blackout, actually. Zero thoughts.” He added that he thought he might be getting pranked.
He burst to fame playing the floppy-haired, lanky Jim on the U.S. version of the mockumentary “The Office,” and transitioned into the clean-cut, muscular action star on Amazon’s “Jack Ryan,” playing the Tom Clancy character previously portrayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck on the big screen. He also co-wrote, directed and starred in “A Quiet Place,” which has grown into a three-film franchise, and created the short-lived but immensely popular pandemic-era webseries “Some Good News.”
Earlier this year, he debuted his sixth directorial effort, “IF,” a film about imaginary friends that also featured Blunt.
The couple have two daughters together.
Krasinski told People in the issue that's on newsstands on Friday that the honor is likely to result in more than just jokes at home.
“I think it’s going to make me do more household chores,” he quipped.
Now in its 40th year, the first Sexiest Man Alive was Mel Gibson. Other past recipients include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John F. Kennedy Jr., David Beckham, Michael B. Jordan, John Legend, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Rudd and Pierce Brosnan.
FILE - John Krasinski arrives at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, Jan. 7, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Producer-director-writer John Krasinski attends the premiere of Paramount Pictures' "IF" at the SVA Theatre, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Emily Blunt, left, and John Krasinski attend The Albies, hosted by the Clooney Foundation for Justice, at the New York Public Library, Sept. 28, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Director John Krasinski poses for photographers upon arrival at the UK Premiere of the film 'IF' in London, May 7, 2024. (Photo by Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just dead, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”
FILE - This image taken from video shows a walkie-talkie that was exploded inside a house, in Baalbek, east Lebanon, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Hezbollah fighters carry one of the coffins of four fallen comrades who were killed Tuesday after their handheld pagers exploded, during their funeral procession in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
