Dear Gossips,

Jennifer Lawrence married Cooke Maroney in Rhode Island this weekend. Many, if not most, of the expected celebrity guests were there: Emma Stone, Adele, Amy Schumer, Kris Jenner, and some who weren’t on the prediction list, like Sienna Miller, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Richie, and Ashley…

The community at the SOS Village is built around family – and the best possible family you could imagine – where everyone comes together to nurture, love and protect the children in their care. These vulnerable children, many who have come through traumatic circumstances, are nurtured in this caring environment and are able to form these quality relationships that they so desperately need to thrive. — Catherine

A post shared by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on Oct 19, 2019 at 4:00pm PDT

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge flew out of Pakistan last Friday after a hectic final 24 hours in the country. On Thursday night, they were supposed to fly back to Islamabad, but their plane encountered a terrifying electrical storm and long story short, they couldn’t land in Islamabad and the British embassy had to arrange for emergency hotel rooms for more than 100 people (security, royals and press). On Friday, they were finally able to fly out of Lahore.

Once they arrived back in the UK, the Cambridges released some new information: while they were stuck in Lahore Friday morning, they ended up returning to the SOS Children’s Village they had visited previously. Apparently, Kate insisted they go again, because she wanted to better understand how the SOS Children’s Village operates, and because she wanted to spend more time with the kids and the adults there. She felt so strongly about it, she devoted her “first Instagram” to highlighting the work done there – this is the first time Kate has written her own Instagram caption, in an IG post full of photos from their second visit (taken by their official tour photographer). It was a smart move on every level, and I even buy that Kate felt very strongly about it and argued that they should go back.

The Cambridges also posted a behind-the-scenes video from their trip. They’re really getting better at being more engaging on social media. It’s funny how they got so much better at it once you-know-who came around.

????Thank you Pakistan! // ????? ???????@UKinPakistan #RoyalVisitPakistan pic.twitter.com/NK3Fw7R5I8

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 20, 2019

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, Instagram.

Much like the last presidential election, I put on blinders and tried not to let all of the “distractions” get in my way. That might have been the wrong way to handle it, because all of those distractions became… the Russian interference in the election, and that led to the downfall of the American republic. Throughout the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was right about almost everything. Go back and watch some of her interviews and debate answers from the fall of 2016 – she clearly saw the Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, and she called it out bluntly, over and over again. Well, we’re almost one year away from the 2020 presidential election. And Hillary is still calling sh-t like she sees it. This time, she f–king knows that *someone* is an asset for Russia and Syria.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Thursday the Russians are currently “grooming” a Democrat running in the presidential primary to run as a third-party candidate and champion their interests. The comment appears to be directed at Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has been accused of being cozy with Russia in the past.

“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said, speaking on a podcast with former Obama adviser David Plouffe. “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”

Clinton never names Gabbard, but there are only five women running for President — Gabbard, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and author Marianne Williamson — and none of the other woman have been accused of being boosted by Russia. Clinton did not provide proof about how Russia is “grooming” Gabbard. She and her team pointed to allegations that Russian news and propaganda sites often report on Gabbard’s campaign and that moments in Gabbard’s campaign have been reportedly amplified by trolls and bots on Twitter with ties to Russia. Gabbard has denied those allegations.

“They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far,” Clinton said. Clinton’s team also noted that some of Gabbard’s foreign policy views align closely with Russian interests.

Gabbard responded on Twitter Friday afternoon to Clinton’s comments. “Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”

[From CNN]

I would also like to thank Hillary Clinton. She has the profile to bring attention to this issue, and even though all of the shadowy Russian assets and bots are amplifying the attacks on Hillary (party like it’s 2016), all that does is prove Hillary’s point AND give us an opportunity to say all of this sh-t out loud. The interests of Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are largely aligned. And I imagine Tulsi’s tweet sounded better in the original Russian. Also: in my opinion, the bots are also amplifying Bernie Sanders quite heavily online. It’s become a problem for journalists to cover because the Bernie bots swarm on anyone offering mild criticism of Sanders or his campaign.

Update from @merica: when asked if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard, Clinton spox Nick Merrill said, “If the nesting doll fits.”

“This is not some outlandish claim,” Merrill added. “This is reality.”

— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) October 18, 2019

Trump last night defended Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard against charges of Russian influence. He wasn’t supposed to do that, he was supposed to pretend they were not all on the same team. https://t.co/8wczbtseFd

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 20, 2019

Gabbard also repeatedly refused to disavow Russian Embassy tweets defending her: https://t.co/WitERpxmam

— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) October 19, 2019

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty.

ITV’s Harry & Meghan: An African Journey aired last night in the UK (it will air on Wednesday here in America). We got to see some tough clips from the documentary ahead of time, including Harry talking about the trauma he still feels when dealing with paparazzi/photojournalists, his comments about whether they would move to Africa full-time, and Meghan holding back tears when she talked about how difficult the past year has been. As the documentary aired last night in the UK, ITV posted more clips on Twitter. Let’s get into it.

Meghan on the British tabloids: “It’s hard. I don’t think anybody can understand that, but in all fairness, I had no idea. Which probably sounds difficult to understand here, but when I first met my now-husband my friends were really happy because I was so happy… But my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.’ And I very naively — I’m an American we don’t have that there — said, ‘What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense! I’m not in tabloids!’ I didn’t get it. So, it’s been… yeah, it’s been complicated.” This is true – Americans do not have any understanding of the power the British tabloids have in destroying people and smearing them and creating these nasty narratives.

‘My British friend said to me ‘I’m sure he’s great but you shouldn’t do it”

The Duchess of Sussex reveals she was warned not to marry Prince Harry because ‘British tabloids will destroy your life’ #HarryAndMeghan https://t.co/GWs5KfuovM pic.twitter.com/SmUl3ofSnd

— ITV News (@itvnews) October 20, 2019

Meghan on how she deals with being beaten down by lies, smears and criticism day after day: “It’s really hard to understand what it’s like. I know what it seems like it should be, but it’s a very different thing. I have said for a long time to H, that’s what I call him, ‘It’s not enough to just survive something. That’s not the point of life. You have got to thrive. You have got to feel happy.’ I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a ‘stiff upper lip.’ I really tried, but I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging. I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair. And that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.” Heartbreaking.

‘I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip’

The Duchess of Sussex admits she’s tried a coping mechanism to manage the pressures that come with marrying Prince Harry #HarryAndMeghan https://t.co/GWs5KfuovM pic.twitter.com/XctGTpk94l

— ITV News (@itvnews) October 20, 2019

According to People Magazine, she continued after this clip, saying: “If things were fair … If I’d done something wrong, I’d be the first one to go ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I would never do that.’ But when people are saying things that are just untrue and they are being told they’re untrue but they’re allowed to still say them — I don’t know anybody in the world who would feel like that’s okay. That’s different from just scrutiny. That’s…. what would you call that? It’s a really different beast, you know.” It’s a SMEAR. It is a campaign of smears. That’s what I’ve been saying for the past year!

And here’s Harry talking around his beef with his brother William. He pretty much says that they’re not getting along at the moment, but Harry does the heavy lifting of acting like it’s just a minor phase and they’ll eventually be close again. Keep in mind that William hasn’t lifted a finger to defend his brother and his sister-in-law. Probably because some of the smears (not all, but some) are coming from him.

‘As brothers you have good days, you have bad days’

Prince Harry says the ‘majority of stuff’ written about his relationship with his brother William is ‘created out of nothing’ and adds: ‘I love him dearly’ #HarryAndMeghan https://t.co/GWs5KfuovM pic.twitter.com/bW7GVALZR6

— ITV News (@itvnews) October 20, 2019

The journalist interviewing Harry and Meghan for this documentary remarked that Harry and Meghan mostly just seemed burned out, raw and tired from dealing with all of the smears and lies and hate and racism. Congrats, British tabloids. You’re going out of your way to destroy an idealistic biracial American woman for daring to… fall in love, and for doing good work as you guys smear her.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Proud mom! https://t.co/Qs6MNinmKg

— Us Weekly (@usweekly) October 19, 2019

In June we heard that Tiger Woods’ ex wife, Elin Nordegren, 39, was pregnant with her third baby. We only knew because she was seen out at her son’s football game looking visibly pregnant. Elin has two children with Tiger: daughter Sam, 12, and son Charlie, 10. She handled her husband’s cheating scandal like a complete boss who knows her worth and has her eyes on the prize. Plus of course she was thinking about her children, but all of that is conjecture because she barely talked about it. We heard shortly after that Elin had been dating an ex Miami Dolphins player named Jordan Cameron, 31, for two years and that he was the father of her baby. US reported after that that Elin was surprised people still were interested in her and cared what she was doing. Well we do care and I’m happy to see that Elin and Jordan welcomed their baby at some point. We know because they attended one of Charlie’s soccer matches together. The pics are exclusive and we don’t have them but you can see them at Radar Online. Jordan is holding the baby and it’s the sweetest! Here’s US’s report:

Parenting double-duty! Elin Nordegren emerged for the first time since giving birth to her third child.

The model, 39, and boyfriend Jordan Cameron cheered on her 10-year-old son, Charlie, at a soccer tournament in Florida on Friday, October 18. The couple brought along their newborn for the family outing.

Nordegren glowed in a black, floral-print maxi dress and white sandals. She chatted with Cameron, 31, as he held their first child together. The proud mom took in the game from a chair on the sidelines.

The Sweden native shares daughter Sam, 12, and son Charlie with ex-husband Tiger Woods. The pair split in 2010 following his highly publicized cheating scandal.

Us Weekly reported in June that Nordegren was pregnant. She showed off her baby bump at Charlie’s flag football game at the time.

A source told Us in June that she and Cameron were “very happy about the pregnancy” and preferred to stay out of the spotlight. “Elin maintains a low profile and has a normal, boring life,” the insider revealed. “Florida allows her to live that quiet life. I hear she’s surprised that people care this much that she’s pregnant.”

[From US Magazine]

Ooh I think I know how to tell that US has a relationship with Elin and that she’s the source of their earlier quotes. They only posted photos of her on her own! They don’t have any pictures whatsoever of Jordan looking like a hot dad with their baby. Maybe US reached out to Elin to get details on the baby’s gender and name. I do think she’ll be open about that, but you never know with her. Congratulations to Elin and Jordan!

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

In my mind, I have several cool aliases. I mean, I write under a nom de plume here, but even then, my real name is cracking through on the Gossip With Celebitchy podcast! But I also think about what kind of alias I would use if I, like, had to go undercover for some reason. What would me cool alias name be? Remy Rooter-Tooter, lmao. Something like that. But I guess we have to give it to Mitt Romney, because the man truly has more imagination than we originally gave him credit for. Mitt Romney is a sitting senator, a former presidential candidate, and one of the few Republicans publicly critical of Donald Trump. And Mitt Romney is also Pierre Delecto, Twitter lurker and online Romney defender. Yes. Give credit where it’s due, Ashley Feinberg discovered this for Slate:

i *believe* i may have found mitt romney’s secret twitter account https://t.co/SNVUeqbLoY

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) October 20, 2019

Shortly after that, Romney confirmed it to the Atlantic:

Just spoke to @MittRomney on the phone, and asked him about Pierre Delecto. His only response: “C’est moi.” Updated my story accordingly: https://t.co/kcfIopokWh

— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) October 21, 2019

Here’s the backstory:

Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah, former Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor, is also, apparently, the man behind a Twitter account that uses the moniker “Pierre Delecto.” Mr. Romney on Sunday admitted to McKay Coppins, a writer at The Atlantic, that he was responsible for the social media account, which he uses to covertly monitor political discourse and occasionally defend himself. It’s unclear what, if anything, Pierre Delecto is a reference to. Several events preceded the admission.

First, The Atlantic published on Sunday a profile of Mr. Romney, one of the few prominent Republican lawmakers to criticize President Trump over his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals. Those efforts form the basis of an impeachment investigation by the House. Mr. Trump lashed out in response this month, calling the senator on Twitter a “pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning.” In one tweet, the president used the hashtag “#IMPEACHMITTROMNEY.”

In the Atlantic profile, Mr. Romney admitted to having what he called a “lurker account” — essentially a profile under a different name that he operated in secret to monitor the political conversation. But he declined to divulge the name associated with the account. The admission spurred curiosity, particularly that of the online newsmagazine Slate. Slate theorized that Pierre Delecto, or Twitter user @qaws9876, was Mr. Romney after it discovered the account among the Twitter followers of one of his grandchildren.

Slate’s Ashley Feinberg found that Pierre Delecto’s first follower was Mr. Romney’s oldest son, Tagg. The account was created in 2011, shortly after Mr. Romney announced his intention to run for president. The account also followed all of Mr. Romney’s children who are on Twitter and several former advisers, according to Slate. The account also posted several telling replies to Romney-related tweets, which were captured by screenshot before the account was made private on Sunday night.

[From The New York Times]

You know what would really be fun? If a prominent politician had a lurker Twitter account where they could devote some time to a silly hobby they didn’t want anyone to know about, like knitting or model trains. Or if they had a lurker account which just followed cute-animal videos and kitten-photo accounts. But Pierre Delecto was actually tweeting political sh-t in defense of Mitt Romney. Which sucks. Still, a fun name. And yes, Trump is totally going to tweet about Pierre Delecto and I can’t wait to see how Trump mangles the spelling.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Please, no threadjacking! I promise that we will cover all of the royal stories in their own time. At the moment, we’re discussing this very odd report which came out over the weekend, ahead of Harry & Meghan: An African Journey. Almost as if *someone* wanted this story to be packaged alongside Harry and Meghan talking about how difficult it’s been to deal with the smear campaign. This is a story which, at a basic level, is about a young royal family setting boundaries and taking some time off. But of course it’s about a lot more than that too.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will take six weeks off from Royal duties for some ‘much-needed family time’, it was reported on Saturday night. The break follows Harry and Meghan’s ten-day tour of southern Africa, footage of which will be seen on ITV Sunday night in a documentary by broadcaster Tom Bradby. Speaking ahead of the programme, Mr Bradby, a friend of Harry, said he believed the couple are ‘vulnerable and bruised’. In the hour-long documentary, Harry reportedly voices his desire to leave the UK, describing Cape Town in South Africa as ‘an amazing place to be able to base ourselves’. He, however, acknowledged that such a move would be very difficult, if not impossible.

A Royal source told The Sunday Times: ‘The Duke and Duchess have a full schedule of engagements and commitments until mid-November, after which they will be taking some much-needed family time.’

The couple are expected to spend their first Christmas with their son Archie, who was born in May, with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family at Sandringham in Norfolk. It is understood they will fly to Los Angeles next month to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland.

[From The Daily Mail]

I think this is something that probably originally came from the Sussexes, like they told people at the palace that they were going to LA for Thanksgiving, and that they wanted a light, easy Christmas, and it got twisted – purposefully twisted – into “the Sussexes are taking six weeks off.” We’ve seen that happen before – people within Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace are super-eager to break news about the Sussexes and put a negative spin on every plan they make. Besides, they can’t really take off for six weeks – there are tons of royal appearances and royal events in November and December. Next we’ll hear the narrative of “well, the Sussexes were planning to take six weeks off but the Queen/Charles/William ordered them not to!”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and WENN.

Some of our lovelies need just a little more… time #halloween #thedollshouse #creepydolls

A post shared by Hecate (@hecateatcb) on Oct 7, 2019 at 3:42pm PDT

This is just a brief note to let you know why the Gossip With Celebitchy podcast isn’t out this week. I forgot to close the door to my office when Chandra and I were recording! My audio sounded very echoey and there was no way for me to edit it enough to make it sound normal. I’m so sorry about this and will be making a pre-recording checklist so that it doesn’t happen again.

We had a great time talking this week as always. The best part of this so far has been talking to Chandra every week. We didn’t make time for this before and I really look forward to it. This has also helped us connect and talk to you too and it’s been so much better than I imagined.

While I am able to edit more quickly and this is becoming habitual, the podcast does take a lot of work. Moving forward we’re making plans to take time off. We talked about our holiday schedule in podcast #28, and I wanted to remind everyone of that. I’ve made a Google Calendar with our release dates and days off for the next three months and they’re below as well.

Please let us know if you have any questions we can answer on future podcasts. You can always text or leave us a voice message, including Amazon product ideas and requests, at 434-218-3219.

We’re definitely coming back next week with new ghost stories from Chandra (if you didn’t hear our ghost story episode yet check it out) and a talk with Hecate about her spooky Halloween dolls! Check them out on her Instagram. Also thanks so much for all of your support, it means a lot!

Gossip With Celebitchy Podcast release dates:
October 28th, November 4th, November 11th, December 9th, December 16th.

Gossip with Celebitchy Podcast break dates:
November 18th, November 25th, December 2nd. December 23rd until end of January.

Thanks for listening bitches!

This is Georgianna. She is a 125+ year old doll who’s been passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. She has her own trousseau and not one but two dolls of her own. Obviously, I left her untouched, as she’s pretty perfect already. My daughter walked up to her and asked me, “what’s creepy about this doll?” #raisedbymonsters #creepydolls #halloween

A post shared by Hecate (@hecateatcb) on Oct 7, 2019 at 3:59pm PDT

I think my favorite thing in this shot is the ghostly skull to the right of the tank. Who is that, I wonder? #halloween #unexpectedghost #creepydolls

A post shared by Hecate (@hecateatcb) on Oct 7, 2019 at 3:50pm PDT

I realize this is probably getting boring for anyone but me so I’ll do the night shots in one glut. #halloween #creepydolls #thedollshouse

A post shared by Hecate (@hecateatcb) on Oct 8, 2019 at 9:28am PDT

I still don’t really care about Todd Phillips’ Joker movie. I know I’m in the minority there – Joker is very successful financially, and Academy voters know that they’re going to have to nominate the film for a bunch of awards too. While critics and filmgoers have concerns about the story/script, everyone seems to agree that Joaquin Phoenix knocked it out of the park, acting-wise. He managed to do something different with this iconic character, which is especially difficult given that before Phoenix stepped in, the most recent Joker portrayal was almost universally loathed. Yes, I’m speaking of Jared Leto’s sad clown Joker in Suicide Squad. As we recently discussed, Jared was in his feelings about all of this because he was loosely promised a stand-alone Joker movie, then the studio basically gave the property to Todd Phillips and Joaquin. It shouldn’t have been a shock to Leto – truly, everyone hated his Joker – but he still fought for his garbage Joker to be the only one, apparently. The Hollywood Reporter did a VERY dishy piece about Leto’s moves behind the scenes to shut it down:

Just how unhappy was Jared Leto over Joker? As Todd Phillips’ dark take on the villain looks likely to gross more than $700 million worldwide, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Leto’s frustration that Warner Bros. was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle.

According to sources familiar with Leto’s behavior, when the Oscar-winning actor learned of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners parent company (it’s unclear whether it was Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes or AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, depending on the timing). The idea was to get Warners to kill the Phillips film. A source in Leto’s camp denies that the actor made this request, and Azoff declined to comment. Azoff and Leto have since parted ways.

Leto had put a lot of effort into his Suicide Squad version of the DC villain, with rotting teeth, bloodshot eyes and slicked-back neon green hair. He spent months getting into character and terrifying his castmates with “gifts” such as a live rat to Harley Quinn actress Margot Robbie, bullets to Deadshot actor Will Smith and a dead pig to the entire cast during rehearsal. It turns out that the studio wasn’t thrilled with these efforts, says a source with knowledge of the situation. And it seems the director wasn’t that pleased with the resulting performance: In the final cut of David Ayer’s ensemble antihero movie, Leto’s Joker got only about 10 minutes of screen time. While promoting the project, Leto — who had been billed as a lead character — spoke to media about how much footage of his Joker had been cut.

“In his defense, it was never really his movie, but his attempt to ‘invent’ a place for himself in it backfired,” says a source involved in the situation.

Meanwhile, Leto’s unhappiness over the Phillips project seems to have helped end an already strained relationship between Leto and CAA. Sources say the actor felt his agents should have told him about the Phillips project earlier and fought harder for his version of Joker. Sources say Leto told his agents that they should stop the rival project, arguing that he wasn’t being treated properly as an Oscar winner (for Dallas Buyers Club). But a person with first-hand knowledge of the situation contends that by then, Leto had burned through four different teams of agents at CAA and there was little love for the actor there. Leto left CAA for rival WME over the summer. A source in Leto’s camp says the rocker-actor had been looking to make a switch and denies that the competing Joker movies factored into his decision.

At this point, sources say Leto’s days as the Joker likely are over. He will not reprise the role for Warners’ upcoming DC movies Birds of Prey (a spinoff centered on Robbie’s Harley Quinn) or in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, due out in 2021. Says one person involved in the situation: “How do you play the Joker you established following [Phoenix]? It kind of ends his Joker run.”

[From THR]

“It turns out that the studio wasn’t thrilled with these efforts… And it seems the director wasn’t that pleased with the resulting performance…” LOL, no joke. Seriously, it wasn’t funny or cute or interesting – Jared Leto’s Joker was garbage in a garbage movie. And what is funny is that Warner Bros fell ass-backwards into a success across the board, basically – they didn’t even WANT Todd Phillips’ and Joaquin Phoenix’s Gritty Incel Joker, and now it’s a massive success and they’ll have to spend money on an Oscar campaign. And they managed to push out Jared Leto’s deeply unpopular Joker too. They didn’t mean for any of this to happen! Also: I feel like the tea about Jared Leto being deeply unpopular at CAA is fascinating. That’s not *just* about Joker sh-t. That’s about a lot more.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Warner Bros.

Last week I wrote about Neil Patrick Harris’ unfortunate run-in with a sea urchin in Croatia while on vacation a couple of months ago. He had surgery and is wearing a “hand-elevating contraption” “for the foreseeable future” to help his hand heal. Actor John Cho has also joined the injured list after a terrible accident on the set of Cowboy Bebop. The show is going on hiatus for several months while John heals:

Netflix’s upcoming live-action series Cowboy Bebop is going on a lengthy hiatus following a knee injury sustained by lead John Cho on the set of the show in New Zealand.

Sources describe the injury as a freak accident that happened on the last take of a routine and well-rehearsed scene almost two weeks ago. It requires surgery, for which Cho has been flown back to Los Angeles, and an extensive rehabilitation. The production shutdown is expected to last seven to nine months. The new filming schedule will be set once Cho’s prognosis is clear.

Cowboy Bebop, an adaptation of the cult Japanese animated series, was a few episodes into production on its 10-episode order when the accident happened.

[From Deadline]

The article points out that production on the show has just begun, and so theoretically, John’s role could be recast. However, Netflix refuses to do that, telling Deadline that their thoughts are with John, who “has our complete support as he recuperates from this injury.”

John also posted on Instagram, thanking everyone for their good wishes:

View this post on Instagram

“Water can flow or it can crash.” – Bruce Lee Thanks for all the well wishes everyone. Gonna be back and flowing in no time!

A post shared by John Cho (@johnthecho) on Oct 18, 2019 at 4:11pm PDT

I’ve loved John ever since I saw him in Ugly Betty in 2007, playing Henry’s coworker in accounting, Kenny. I still laugh about Kenny’s insistence that “Tucson” should be pronounced “Tuck-son” because of how it’s spelled. I remember the #starringJohnCho campaign back in 2016 to highlight the lack of diversity on-screen. At the time, I thought, “YES!” More diverse representation on screen, and especially, more John Cho! I’m so excited that he has a starring role in Cowboy Bebop, but am so sorry to hear about his accident. I hope his recovery goes well and quickly.

photos credit: WENN and Backgrid