For a while now, I’ve believed that Prince William – aka Willileaks – has been dropping big pieces of information about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex following their exit from the royal family. I still suspect that William leaked the Sussexes’ move to LA, because that leak came just after Prince Charles’ coronavirus diagnosis, and both William and Harry were in touch with Charles. William likely would have learned in those phone calls about Harry’s location. So he leaked it. William wanted the “why won’t Harry abandon his wife and come back” headlines. He also wanted the “Hollywood Harry” narrative to start taking shape. My point here: Willileaks must have been sitting on this one for a few weeks, as part of a rainy-day gossip fund only to be used when the royal sh-t hit the fan. And that’s what the Tatler cover story has done: made the Cambridges look weak, selfish, petty, angry and lazy. So isn’t it just perfect that one of the Daily Mail’s top stories is about who is paying for Harry and Meghan’s security costs?

Friends of the Sussexes have hit back at claims that Prince Charles is footing the bill for Harry and Meghan’s security costs in Los Angeles. They instead allege that the couple are being protected by a private security team already in place at Tyler Perry’s mansion in Los Angeles. An insider told the Daily Mail earlier this week that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could only afford to start paying off their £2.4million bill for Frogmore Cottage after Prince Charles had agreed to foot their astronomical security costs in the US.

A friend of the couple has now claimed that the Sussexes will pay for any security measures out of their own pocket in the future. Meghan and Harry have told their friends that any security team they do hire, they will pay for themselves, the source told The Daily Beast, suggesting that the couple had yet to secure their own permanent security team.

Instead, it’s been claimed the couple and their young son are living under the protection of security already in place at the $18 million mansion. According to the anonymous source, the couple are not ‘asking for any special treatment’ with regard to their security situation, and ‘have not received any’.

The source also said the Sussexes have experienced ‘unimaginable’ levels of intrusion from the press while living in the Beverly Hills mansion during the coronavirus pandemic, including paparazzi-operated drones illegally flying within 20 feet of their house to snap photographs. At least five such incidents have been reported to the LAPD.

[From The Daily Mail]

“The source also said the Sussexes have experienced ‘unimaginable’ levels of intrusion from the press…” Yes, from the Daily Mail, the same outlet which hired a drone-paparazzo to take photos of the exterior of Tyler Perry’s home. And if you believe a real “friend of the Sussexes” would sit down with the Daily Mail to spill the tea at THIS POINT, well… bless your heart. This is Willileaks trying desperately to change the subject back to a conversation about the Sussexes. “Hey, I heard that Tyler Perry’s security team is protecting H&M.” DM: “OH REALLY, we’ll go with that!”

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red and Backgrid.

Donald Trump has a sick mind. He spouts lies and white supremacist propaganda in speeches and online. He actively breaks laws constantly. There has been a conversation for years about whether Twitter should suspend his account, especially as Trump mentally deteriorates, as he lashes out, spreads harmful, violent conspiracies and perpetuates lies and misinformation. This week, Twitter took a mild step at putting Trump in check – they added one small line to his mail-in ballot lies with a link telling people to get the facts. Trump’s reaction has been an absolute hissy fit:

Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election. If that happens, we no longer have our freedom. I will never let it happen! They tried hard in 2016, and lost. Now they are going absolutely CRAZY. Stay Tuned!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020

Think about that for a moment. Trump is arguing that tech companies are “censoring” his efforts to run lies, unchecked propaganda and violent conspiracies through Twitter. And he’s the president. That’s not all – Trump is going to sign an executive order about this:

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order intended to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for what gets posted on their platforms, two senior administration officials said early Thursday. Such an order, which officials said was still being drafted and was subject to change, would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples.

The move is almost certain to face a court challenge and is the latest salvo by President Trump in his repeated threats to crack down on online platforms. Twitter this week attached fact-checking notices to two of the president’s tweets after he made false claims about voter fraud, and Mr. Trump and his supporters have long accused social media companies of silencing conservative voices. White House officials said the president would sign the order later Thursday, but they declined to comment on its content. A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment.

[From The NY Times]

I read the NYT piece a few times to try to understand what Trump *thinks* he’s arguing versus what it would look like in practice. Basically, it seems like if he does the EO and the courts held up the EO, social media sites would have an even bigger responsibility to censor and ban unhinged, violent lunatics like Trump and his minions because they would have increased liability. Maybe I’m wrong? Mark Zuckerberg thinks I’m wrong. Zuckerberg thinks Jack Dorsey at Twitter is wrong too:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Twitter on Wednesday after the microblogging platform fact-checked a tweet of President Donald Trump’s that claimed mail-in voting increases voter fraud. Twitter tagged Trump’s tweets with the message reading, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” The message linked to a page contradicting Trump’s assertions. Studies have not shown evidence of widespread voter fraud via absentee ballots in the past. Twitter’s action marked the first time the platform has ever marked any of Trump’s tweets as misleading.

“We have a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg told Dana Perino, host of the Fox News show The Daily Briefing, in an interview clip. The full interview is expected to air on Thursday. “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. In general, private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that,” Zuckerberg added.

Perino said that Zuckerberg told her that Facebook refuses to intervene in censoring public posts unless there’s a threat of imminent harm. She added that Facebook is “hands off” when it comes to political speech.

[From Newsweek]

I mean… Facebook and Twitter both have a Russian-disinformation and Nazi problem. While Jack Dorsey doesn’t do enough to shut it down, I feel like Dorsey is on a much better path, and Dorsey might actually give a sh-t about all the problematic crap that’s on his platform. Zuckerberg does not. Zuckerberg is fine with MAGAs, Russian operatives and Nazis using his platform to incite, engage, misinform, plot and harm.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

I needed to meditate on all of the happenings with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Tatler this week. For whatever record, I still believe the Tatler cover story was supposed to be about Embiggening Kate. That was obvious from the first quotes released from the piece – it was supposed to be all about how hard Kate works, how she’s perilously close to Zooming herself into an early, overworked grave, how Harry and Meghan are terrible for leaving Will and Kate to pick up the shattered pieces of the Windsor clan, how stoically Kate deals with all of the endless Sussex drama and how she’s the perfect Future Queen. This is why I believe that Kensington Palace and the Cambridges likely did work with Tatler in the early stages. But then something happened and suddenly the Tatler piece was shady AF. First, Kensington Palace sent out two denials, one through an unnamed source, then a second through official the official communications office. Then Tatler responded:

Society bible Tatler has clashed with Kensington Palace over a story claiming that Kate Middleton with her post-Megxit workload – with the magazine backing the piece despite royal insistence that the claims are false.

Sources claiming to be friends of the couple told Anna Pasternak at Tatler magazine that Kate was ‘fuming’ with the heavy workload after Megxit, revealing: ‘William and Catherine really wanted to be hands-on parents and the Sussexes have effectively thrown their three children under a bus.’

A Kensington Palace spokesperson dismissed the claims, saying: ‘This story contains a swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations which were not put to Kensington Palace prior to publication.’

It prompted a Tatler spokesperson to add today: ‘Tatler’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Dennen stands behind the reporting of Anna Pasternak and her sources. Kensington Palace knew we were running the “Catherine the Great” cover months ago and we asked them to work together on it. The fact they are denying they ever knew is categorically false.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Parsing both statements is quite fascinating – KP never claimed to not know about the article, they merely said that they were not given the article to review before publication. That is a whole other thing, because how many media outlets do that for Kensington Palace? I would imagine quite a few allow KP to review pieces before publication. But not Tatler. As for Tatler’s response… “we asked them to work together on it. The fact they are denying they ever knew is categorically false.” Note that Tatler doesn’t say whether William and Kate agreed to work together originally. But yeah, of f–king course the Cambridges knew.

So, here’s my general theory: the Cambridges thought they were authorizing some soft-focus embiggening cover story in which they could continue to smear the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But Anna Pasternak actually – gasp – did research and spoke to actual people in the Cambridges’ social set (which Will & Kate authorized), including some interviews with the Turnip Toff set. Keen Defenders can cry all they want that “Meghan and Harry are behind this!” But the bigger issue is that Rose Hanbury’s fingerprints might be all over this. If not Rose herself, then the Turnip Toffs who have aligned themselves more closely with Rose than Kate. There’s just too much “Norfolk Drama” in the piece. Which means drama amongst the turnips, not the Sussexes.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red.

Chris Evan’s Apple TV+ series, Defending Jacob, is wrapping up but fortunately in the Age of Streaming, the show and therefore its promotion can live on long past the premiere. Chris recently appeared on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast with Scott Feinberg. This is the first THR podcast I’ve listened to, so I don’t know if this is their approach to all guests, but it sounded like Scott didn’t know much about Chris’ personal life prior to the show. If so, Scott’s a great reporter and really did his research prior. The reason I mention this is because Scott asked Chris questions that he’s answered many times before. What was interesting was to hear Chris’ response now that he’s matured, evolved and achieved success. One of the stories Scott brought back into the spotlight was the fact that Chris’ anxiety, which he’s spoken about many times, almost prevented him from auditioning for the role for which he will likely be best remembered, Marvel’s Captain America.

By the time he was in Houston shooting Adam Kassen and Mark Kassen’s indie gem Puncture in 2010, things were getting really bad. “It was the first time I started having mini panic attacks on set,” Evans recalls. “I really started to think, ‘I’m not sure if this [acting] is the right thing for me, I’m not sure if I’m feeling as healthy as I should be feeling.’” And then Marvel came calling again. The studio, which had recently launched its MCU with 2008?s Iron Man, invited him to test for the part of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. If they liked him, he would be locked into a nine-film deal which would come with a big payday, to be sure, but also considerably greater fame, which he feared would make his anxiety totally debilitating. “My suffering would be my own,” Evans recognized, so, to the dismay of his agents, he turned down the opportunity to even test — several times, even as the proposed number of required films was reduced to six and the proposed salary was increased.

Then, to Evans’ amazement, Marvel came back to him again — and offered him the part outright, which made him reconsider his firm stance. He consulted with Iron Man star Robert Downey, Jr., with whom he shared an agent; a therapist; and trusted friends and family, who urged him not to make a major decision based on fear. He finally decided to say yes. And, a decade later, he says, “It was the best decision I’ve ever made, and I really owe that to [Marvel chief] Kevin Feige for being persistent and helping me avoid making a giant mistake.” He adds, “To be honest, all the things that I was fearing never really came to fruition.”

[From THR]

As I suggested, Chris has spoken of his anxiety before. Only prior, it almost sounded like he was using his anxiety as an angle to promote a film. It was a big nut to swallow that this conventionally handsome, well-built white pin-up guy just couldn’t hack the admiration of fame. But it was hard to hear what he was saying because he was having difficulty explaining what he was trying to convey. At times, it came across like he was attacking Marvel, thereby biting the hand that fed him. Now, Chris’ ability to explain how he felt back then clears those interviews up. He’s done a lot of work on himself, which includes therapy, and it shows. It makes sense that a person who had just experienced his first panic attacks would carefully consider the thing that brought them on. He’s worked through it now and able to handle the anxiety and the fame in a healthy way. He even made a point to say that he now recognizes that his panic moments were minor compared to others. I appreciate how he’s framing the discussion now. He’s not walking back what he said before, but showing how beneficial working it through it can be. It’s good advocacy.

An interesting tidbit that I didn’t know was that Chris dreamt of being a Disney animator before he set his sights on acting. Also, he considers Fracture the role that got away, while still graciously acknowledging Ryan Gosling deserved it. In the course of his Cap story, he discussed waiting to hear whether he got the role in What’s Your Number, which is the best Chris Evans film of all time. I may be joking, but you don’t want to know how many times I have watched that film. As a matter of fact, I might toddle off to watch it again right now *whistles Three Times a Lady*.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photo credit: WENN/Avalon and Getty Images

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes) on May 27, 2020 at 12:01pm PDT

For whatever record, I am 100% here for turning Christian Cooper into a legitimate celebrity. He’s more compelling and interesting than 99% of the people in the entertainment industry. Christian Cooper is the African-American bird-watcher who was threatened by “Central Park Karen” Amy Cooper several days ago. He told her to leash her dog. She called the cops and claimed that she was being threatened by an African-American man. She ended up losing her dog and her job and she’s currently been investigated by the police and the city’s human rights department. In the wake of the Central Park Karen incident, people have been sharing video clips of Christian Cooper talking about birds and bird-watching in the city. He’s a beautiful, buff Harvard-educated bird nerd and I love him. And I loved him even more after reading this New York Times interview with him – he took the Times reporter bird-watching in the park yesterday. Some highlights:

He knows that we all make mistakes: “Any of us can make — not necessarily a racist mistake, but a mistake. And to get that kind of tidal wave in such a compressed period of time, it’s got to hurt. It’s got to hurt. I’m not excusing the racism. But I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart.” He opened his mouth to speak further and then stopped himself. He had been about to say the phrase, “that poor woman,” he later acknowledged, but he could not bring himself to complete the thought.

He has no doubt that her intent was racial: “She went racial. There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage. I don’t know if it was a conscious thing or not. But she did it, and she went there.”

His love of birding: Mr. Cooper’s love of birding began at age 10, he said, when his parents, two Long Island schoolteachers, enrolled him in a 4-H program. There, in a woodworking class, he crafted a bird feeder that he set in his lawn. The creatures that flocked to it set off a fascination that has endured for four decades, through his time at Harvard, where he graduated with a degree in political science, and into his years as an editor for Marvel Comics, where he is credited with creating one of the first gay characters in the Star Trek comic universe.

How do we make progress: “If we are going to make progress, we’ve got to address these things, and if this painful process is going to help us address this — there’s the yellow warbler! If this painful process — oh, a Baltimore oriole just flew across!— helps to correct, or takes us a step further toward addressing the underlying racial, horrible assumptions that we African-Americans have to deal with, and have dealt with for centuries, that this woman tapped into, then it’s worth it. Sadly, it has to come at her expense.”

He read Amy Cooper’s apology: He called it “a start.” He said he was not interested in meeting her or in any face-to-face reconciliation.

He knows there aren’t many black bird-watchers, but: “We should be out here. The birds belong to all of us. The birds don’t care what color you are.”

[From The NY Times]

Again, I am completely here for more profiles of and interviews with Christian Cooper. Get him to do a weekly bird-watchers column in the Times. Give him a talk show on PBS. Give him a bird-watching and race-relations Netflix documentary. Anyway, yeah – he didn’t have to show any sympathy for Amy Cooper but he did, which is more than she’s shown him all week. If he had not gotten her on video, Amy Cooper’s version of what went down would have been very different, I have no doubt. And he knows that too.

Photos courtesy of Instagram/NYT and screencaps from Topic video.

Tatler absolutely blessed us with all of this fun royal drama this week. Maybe things really are getting back to normal, gossip-wise. As we discussed, Tatler’s “Catherine the Great” cover story was supposed to be a sugary Embiggening project, but it blew up in William and Kate’s faces and made them look lazy, entitled and weak. Kensington Palace issued a denial and Tatler clapped back saying that they stood by their reporting AND that KP knew about the story for months. In People Magazine’s coverage, a “royal source” said that while KP didn’t specify which parts of Tatler’s story were false, the source “tells PEOPLE there is no truth to Tatler’s claim that Kate feels overwhelmed by the heavier workload resulting from Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s recent step down from royal life.” That IS oddly specific. It’s not “false” that Kate magically has a bigger workload post-Sussexit, it’s only false that Kate feels overwhelmed by the now unmanageable Zoom calls once a week. LMAO.

Meanwhile, I was waiting with bated breath to see all of the furious reactions from Kensington Palace. You know that William was stomping his feet and screaming at everybody for the past two days. And much like the Rose Hanbury debacle, I thought this would be a great opportunity for William to run off to see Richard Kay at the Daily Mail. And that’s exactly what happened. You can read the full piece here at the DM – trust that Kay got to the important stuff at the beginning, namely that no matter what, everything is still Meghan’s Fault.

How dare Middle-Class Will & Cathy be mocked by a snobbish magazine? “Suddenly they are the uneasy focus of a snobbish profile in society magazine Tatler, which touches not only on the sensitive issue of the alleged rift between Kate and sister-in-law Meghan, but also raises some frankly impertinent questions about the Duchess’s apparent ‘thinness’ and her Middleton family background.

The Meghan-tights story: “Had Kate intervened as the article suggests, say friends, it would have been not just because she knew that tights look neater but also as a mark of respect to the Queen. Certainly there have been previous reports of disagreements between the two duchesses over wedding day outfits, with one claim that Kate, who had not long given birth to Prince Louis, had been reduced to tears after an encounter with Meghan. Middleton family friends have always denied the tears story but have also acknowledged that the relationship between the two women has not been easy. All the same, they do not recognise Tatler’s assertion that the Duchess of Cambridge had ‘sought the opportunity to put Meghan in her place, reprimanding her for speaking imperiously to Kensington Palace staff’. According to insiders the ‘tights episode’ — as reported by Tatler — is ‘not quite right’.

Kay’s sources insist that Kate did try to help Meghan: Many believe this was the moment when a froideur descended between the two women, one determined to do things her way, regardless of the rulebook, the other finding her offer to help and be a guide firmly rejected. At the same time, the Duchess’s circle deny the claim from a friend that Kate ‘never pulled Meghan under her wing and said: “I’ll show you the ropes.” ‘ As a close friend of the couple told me: ‘Help can only be provided if it is willingly accepted.’

The Cambridges are mad about the lazy stuff: What has upset the Cambridges, and upset them deeply, is the claim that Kate somehow resents the increase in duties that have come her way…. Aides are refusing to be drawn on this, but I understand that this assertion that she is workshy is utterly rejected and that the couple are angered at what they perceive to be a false and misleading picture. One figure says that the Duchess ‘is doing more, because she asked to do more’. A close friend tells me: ‘Yes, she is juggling a lot with three young children at home while contributing when she can to the national effort, but she is very conscious that there are many, many more people under far more pressure than she is.’ They particularly repudiate the idea that this makes the Duchess out of touch with the hardships so many households are facing.

Tricky about Carole/Diana: References to William’s relationship with her family will also hurt. A ‘country grandee’ is quoted as saying: ‘I’ve heard that Prince William is obsessed with Carole. She’s the mummy he always wanted.’ This, say friends, is absurd. And it is not the only reference to the Princess of Wales. The article also says: ‘Outwardly it seems that with years of scrutinising public pressure Kate has become perilously thin, just like — some point out — Princess Diana.’ But the Princess suffered from an eating disorder that for a while was a central and damaging feature in her life. For Kate, this is perhaps the most uncomfortable barb of all.

[From The Daily Mail]

Maybe I’ve just been starving for royal drama, but this piece was very ODD, right? While I feel William’s fingerprints throughout (and I’m sure William directed Kay to write this rebuttal), I really felt like Kay allowed some of Tatler’s criticisms to go unanswered, un-denied, just left out there. Especially the stuff about the Middletons – all Kay will really say is that Kate will find it “wounding” especially because “Tatler is read by the Duchess’s friends and lies around in the drawing rooms of the country houses she and William visit.” And how! And Kay’s piece ends on the note about an eating order too, without really rebutting that either. Very curious. And like many of Willileaks’ tantrums, I feel like this will only lead the Tatler debacle becoming an even bigger scandal.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red, Backgrid.

I finally figured out what HBO Max is. I know this isn’t groundbreaking, but I thought it was just going to be extra, less prestige content that HBO didn’t feature on their main streaming platform, HBO Go. I also didn’t really understand the difference between HBO Go and HBO Now. It turns out that HBO Go and HBO Now have the same content, you can just order HBO Now separately while HBO Go comes with your cable package. It’s confusing that they didn’t call it the same thing and just let people order it if they wanted. HBO Max is all of HBO (all of the shows on the other two streaming services) plus some extra content. HBO Max costs $14.99 and so does HBO Now so it’s not like it’s more expensive, which is good news. I think they’re just trying to get those of us with HBO Go from our cable companies to subscribe to their streaming service so they’re bundling in more original shows. A lot of consumers can’t get it though because HBO Max, which came out yesterday, is not yet available as an app on Roku or Amazon devices. Roku says they’re hoping to work out a deal with HBO but Amazon threw shade at HBO Max.

Despite being available on a host of platforms and devices… HBO parent company AT&T has not yet reached an agreement with Roku or Amazon. This means that even if you have the HBO Go or HBO Now app on your Roku or Fire TV, or if your HBO subscription was upgraded to Max, you won’t be able to watch HBO Max on there.

HBO Now and Go users should still be able to use those respective apps to continue watching the regular HBO they already have.

In a statement, a Roku spokesman said the company still hopes to add HBO Max:

“As the No. 1 streaming platform in the US we believe that HBO Max would benefit greatly from the scale and content marketing capabilities available with distribution on our platform. We are focused on mutually positive distribution agreements with all new (over-the-top) services that will deliver a quality user experience to viewers in the more than 40 million households that choose Roku to access their favorite programs and discover new content.

Unfortunately we haven’t reached agreement yet with HBO Max. While not on our platform today, we look forward to helping HBO Max in the future successfully scale their streaming business.”

Amazon, meanwhile, was a bit more aggressive. In a statement provided Wednesday afternoon, the company indicated that it is upset that AT&T isn’t just adding Max’s content to the regular HBO offering that is available through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels.

“With a seamless customer experience, nearly 5 million HBO streamers currently access their subscription through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels,” a company spokeswoman said. “Unfortunately, with the launch of HBO Max, AT&T is choosing to deny these loyal HBO customers access to the expanded catalog.

“We believe that if you’re paying for HBO, you’re entitled to the new programming through the method you’re already using. That’s just good customer service and that’s a priority for us.”

[From CNet]

Look at Amazon scolding AT&T for making them ask their customers to subscribe to another HBO flavor! I have a Roku in the bedroom on an older TV (I love it, I can plug my headphones into the remote) and an Android TV in the living room. I checked the Android TV and it does have HBO Max as an app. (It took me a while to find it though. I don’t like the usability on that TV, it’s a Sony.) Also it took me about ten minutes to figure out the difference between all the HBO services and this is my job! All I do is read about entertainment and celebrity news all day. I know I’m not a mental giant but HBO seems to have a branding problem. When I went to their websites they made the options between HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO Max clear, but there’s so much press around these services and a lot of confusion. Maybe that’s part of the reason Amazon doesn’t want to get on board. Plus HBO’s new Max-only content isn’t compelling enough to make me want to subscribe. They do have older comfort-watch series like Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Big Bang Theory, and Doctor Who, but those of us who still have cable can just DVR a lot of those.

Photos via Avalon.red

Tracee Ellis Ross is such a ray of sunshine. I know CB is a superfan and I admit, so am I. I love her confidence, her charisma, her sense of style, her humor – everything. So I’m delighted to know that Tracee and I share something in common: stealing from our mothers. Not just anything, but items right out of their homes. Tracee is promoting her movie with Dakota Johnson, High Note, which I cannot wait to see. She spoke to Sibley Scoles from Access Hollywood who asked Tracee about a kitchen rug she’d supposedly nabbed from her mother, the legendary Diana Ross. Not only did Tracee admit to it, she proceeded to point out everything else she’d swiped from La Ross’s home.

A great voice isn’t the only thing Tracee’s gotten from her mama. She loves stealing stuff from her too. Is it true that you did get that kitchen rug from her when you left college?

Yeah, I still have it. I often go to my mom’s house and do what I call “shopping.” I’m not kidding, (pointing) There’s pillows right there, totally taken from my mom. Yeah, uhm – oh-oh-oh! (pointing) That little table, right there! Walked out of the house with it. She turns around and I walk out like I’ve gone shopping, like I’ve gone to Bloomingdales. Thank you, ma!

[From YouTube]

This is relatable on two, very different planes. The first is, I would love to showcase items that once belonged to Diana Ross so if I could make off with a pillow or two, I absolutely would. I wonder if Diana even notices. Like, does she walk into Tracee’s house and compliment her on the adorable table, never realizing that her good taste on display? If Diana does her own shopping, I’m sure she knows when something goes missing, but if she has a designer, she may not connect with every item. On the second plane – what is it with wanting to rip off your mom? I know for a fact if I point to something in my mom’s house and compliment it enough, I will either walk out with it or receive a brand new one for whatever gift-giving holiday comes up next. I don’t need my mom’s stuff, I can afford the occasional trinket or filler item, but there’s this evil feeling that creeps up in me when I cross her threshold. It doesn’t work for the jewelry, though. I can fawn over a piece of jewelry until I produce tears but she’ll just side-eye me and keep me at arm’s length the rest of the visit. I love Tracee’s enthusiasm for her ‘finds.’ I swear, she would be the most fun attendee at a Girls Night.

A minute 35 seconds into the video below, Tracee talks about being in an elevator with Keanu Reeves at the Met Gala and not speaking so as to, “leave him space to propose.” See, it doesn’t matter what level of Hollywood Royalty you are; no one is impervious to the Keanu effect.

Photo credit” WENN/Avalon and YouTube

It feels like this happened ten years ago, but it was just last Thanksgiving when everything broke about Gabrielle Union and America’s Got Talent. Gabrielle’s AGT contract was not renewed and she thought that was suspicious. She had good reason – she had been vocal about several racist and problematic situations on the set, and she was targeted by various Beckys and Karens online for her skin color, her hair, her outfits and everything else. Nevermind that Gabrielle expanded the viewership. She was still asked not to return. Gabrielle said very little about the situation in the past six months, but now she covers Variety and she’s got some sh-t to say. You can read the full Variety piece here. Some highlights:

Simon Cowell’s smoking: It was when the newly minted judge stood on a closed soundstage and was enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke, to which she’s been severely allergic her entire life. Producers, fellow judges and set assistants looked on unfazed as series creator and star Simon Cowell finished his smoke while Union’s respiratory system went haywire.

When she complained about Cowell’s smoking, nothing was done: “I couldn’t escape. I ended up staying sick for two months straight. It was a cold that lingered, and turned into bronchitis, because I couldn’t shake it. It impacted my voice, which affects my ability to do my job,” she says. To make matters worse, Union says her constant runny nose rattled Mandel, someone open about his struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder and germophobia, who sat to her right onstage. “It was challenging to tend to my illness without being made to feel like I’m responsible for my own sickness. It put me in a position from day one where I felt othered. I felt isolated. I felt singled out as being difficult, when I’m asking for basic laws to be followed. I want to come to work and be healthy and safe and listened to.”

Her goal: “At the end of all this, my goal is real change — and not just on this show but for the larger parent company. It starts from the top down. My goal is to create the happiest, most high-functioning, inclusive, protected and healthy example of a workplace. There are so many people who are committed to making NBCUniversal and Comcast different, who truly want to be a part of the solution and on the right side of history,” says Union, who thinks NBC is hardly alone as a media institution in need of an overhaul. “In the same breath, there are some people who want the wheels of change to come to a grinding halt because they feel that their privilege is being challenged.”

The racist joke made by Jay Leno: He made a crack about a painting of Cowell and his dogs, saying the animals looked like food items at a Korean restaurant. The joke was widely perceived as perpetuating stereotypes about Asian people eating dog meat. “My first big interview in this industry, the first person who allowed me to come on their talk show, was Jay Leno. I’ve always held him in high regard, but I was not prepared for his joke,” Union says. “I gasped. I froze. Other things had already happened, but at this point, it was so wildly racist.”

She went to corporate about Leno: Union’s first instinct was to confront Leno directly, but she demurred, saying she was “going to guess there’s a corporate protocol.” In reality, she found, nothing happened. The reaction from production was one she would hear repeatedly throughout the season: “We’ll delete it. We’ll edit it out.” Union says this enraged her. Leno declined to comment. “You cannot edit out what we just experienced. There is not an edit button in my brain or in my soul. To experience this kind of racism at my job and there be nothing done about it, no discipline, no companywide email, no reminder of what is appropriate in the workplace?” she says.

[From Variety]

There were also sections about how the audience had issues with Gabrielle’s hair, and she brought it around to the fact that many of the contestants of color did not get the same amount of time in hair & makeup as the white contestants. She also talks a lot about the toxic work environment (in general) of AGT, and the many blind spots of the producers and of the NBC network. It just seems like there was no one person Union could go to – she was sent through a corporate bureaucracy which was not built for her. She still sounds wounded by the experience of simply being a black woman in that toxic white space.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Earlier this week we discussed John Krasinski selling his show, Some Good News, to ViacomCBS. I’ve been a big fan of John (and his wife Emily Blunt) for a while. As I said, I thought the heart of the show was all of these folks, famous and non, coming together for the purpose of spreading joy during lockdown. So I don’t think it will be as special once we reopen and the show goes to into studio production. But that was all I thought about it. I’m still a big fan of John’s and if there is an audience for SGN, fine. But it seems John was affected by those of us who expressed our displeasure because he defended the sale while on Rainn Wilson’s Instagram Live series, Hey There, Human. And, as we all guessed, the sale was about money and John not having the time to continue it.

John Krasinski isn’t saying goodbye to Some Good News anytime soon.
Krasinski made an appearance on his former The Office costar Rainn Wilson’s Instagram Live series Hey There, Human, where the two discussed his highly successful online show.

After doing eight episodes on his own, the actor said he decided to sell the show to ViacomCBS in order to keep it going.

“I was only planning on doing eight of them during quarantine, because I have these other things that I’m going to be having to do very soon, like Jack Ryan and all this other stuff,” Krasinski said. “More than that… writing, directing, and producing — all those things — with a couple of my friends was so much.”

Once production on his other projects begins, Krasinski said continuing the show on his own would not be “sustainable.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be sustainable with my prior commitments,” Krasinski said. “I would love to keep doing the show from my office forever. It just wasn’t sustainable.”

While Krasinski said he will take a step back from Some Good News in the future, he will “be a part of it” whenever possible — including resuming his role as host.
“In eight weeks [Some Good News] went from not existing to now being on one of these huge news networks,” Krasinski said. “We have a lot of really fun stuff planned, and I can’t wait to dig in. I’m going to be a part of it whenever I can, and I’m going to host a couple [episodes] and bring on a different community of people. But we’re really, really excited about it.”

[From People]

It has been mentioned a couple of times that there was a bidding war for SGN and yes, I recognize the siren’s call of the almighty dollar. People confirmed that John self-financed the eight episodes he hosted, and he does have many other commitments that were on hold during lockdown, so this is all perfectly understandable. It would be great if SGN found a way to spread joy in post-pandemic America. Part of the excitement of the quarantine version was the surprise of who popped up during the show. Some of that will be lost now that these appearances will likely become paid or means for promotion. But, I got into Ellen’s Greatest Night of Giveaways and it was perfectly obviously that every second of that had been orchestrated so who knows. I don’t wish John or the new show any ill will, I just prefer the story of how a very famous man and his very famous friends went out of their way to create a few moments of beauty for a suffering nation, simply to make us all feel better.

Photo credit: Photo credit: WENN/Avalon