Last month, Lainey mentioned that Brad Pitt had a space movie, Ad Astra, that was supposed to come out, only to get pulled from the release schedule. The movie was due on May 24, but there had been no trailer or publicity for it, so it wasn’t exactly surprising when Ad Astra got pulled out of the Ma…

Last month, Lainey mentioned that Brad Pitt had a space movie, Ad Astra, that was supposed to come out, only to get pulled from the release schedule. The movie was due on May 24, but there had been no trailer or publicity for it, so it wasn’t exactly surprising when Ad Astra got pulled out of the Ma…

Ayesha Curry has a long interview with WorkingMother.com. Ayesha is perhaps most famous for being married to Golden State Warrior Steph Curry, and she’s been doing press recently to promote her many projects. She owns several restaurants, including the just-opened International Smoke in Miami, and she runs a Homemade Meal Kits business in California. She also does cookware and she’s got several sponsorships/ad contracts. Ayesha is successful in her own right, no doubt. But I also sort of think that perhaps all of her success wouldn’t have happened so spectacularly if she wasn’t married to one of the most famous basketball players in the world, you know? It’s like the debate on who we should consider “self-made.” Ayesha did THAT and I have no doubt she’s worked very hard. But also, being married to Steph absolutely opened so many doors for her. Some highlights from this interview:

People think Steph is the reason she’s successful: “I think a lot of people do not take me seriously. They think this is something I’ve obtained because of my husband’s income. That’s not true. He hasn’t invested a dime in my restaurant business.”

People think she should just be a quiet WAG: “It’s this weird hierarchy of misogyny. When my career was starting to take off, this male reporter bashed me on live television, saying I should be more like the other [basketball] players’ wives. He literally said, ‘They sit there, they don’t cause any problems, and they look pretty.’ Why am I not allowed to have a passion and a dream and a voice? That started a fire in me. I could not be stopped, and I wanted to prove myself. Now the conversation has shifted. Stephen doesn’t get any negative [questions] about me. Especially in the Bay Area, people say to him, ‘I like her food a lot,’ and that’s been special for me.”

Her multiracial background: Her mother is Jamaican and Chinese, and her dad is Polish and African American. “Everyone was from a place other than Canada and that’s how you identified yourself, not black or white. I identified as Jamaican because that’s where my mom came from,” she says of her childhood in Toronto, where her neighbors were mostly Asian and Indian. “In the states I’m simply ‘black.’” It’s also a lesson she’s passing on to her daughters. “They’re fair in complexion, and they’ve said: ‘I’m not black; look at my skin.’ And I said: ‘No, no, no. You’re a black woman. You have melanin. It’s part of who you are. Our descendants are from Africa. This is what that means.’ It’s been a journey teaching them that, and that black comes in many different shades.”

Embracing her multiracial background: “My own community needs to embrace everyone better. Sometimes I feel like I’m too black for the white community, but I’m not black enough for my own community. That’s a hard thing to carry. That’s why my partnership with CoverGirl was special for me because I felt like I didn’t fit the mold [of a CoverGirl]. I’m not in the entertainment industry, in the traditional sense. I’m not thin; I’m 170 pounds on a good day. It’s been a journey for me, and that’s why I want my girls to understand who they are—and to love it.”

When she got a boob job: “I didn’t realize at the time, but after having Ryan, I was battling a bit of postpartum that lingered for a while. It came in the form of me being depressed about my body. So I made a rash decision. The intention was just to have them lifted, but I came out with these bigger boobs I didn’t want. I got the most botched boob job on the face of the planet. They’re worse now than they were before. I would never do anything like that again, but I’m an advocate of if something makes you happy, who cares about the judgment?”

[From Working Mother]

“He hasn’t invested a dime in my restaurant business…” Okay, but would investors met with Ayesha if she wasn’t married to Steph? I’m really asking. Again, I’m not saying she doesn’t work hard and have good ideas and run a quality restaurant – I’m saying that the Curry name has opened a lot of doors for her. Also: “That’s why my partnership with CoverGirl was special for me because I felt like I didn’t fit the mold…” Like, she’s a beautiful light-skinned woman. You know who has difficulty getting beauty contracts? Black models with darker skin. I’m not saying there isn’t a two-sided colorism within the African-American community, but let’s also point out that society as a whole has less of a “problem” with beautiful light-skinned/mixed race black women. They’re idealized within the beauty industry.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Here are some photos of Mindy Kaling at the premiere event for her movie Late Night, which she wrote and stars in, alongside Emma Thompson. Mindy wore Valentino, and I wish this was a full-length gown rather than a cocktail dress, honestly. But she looks fine and I too enjoy the “fitted bodice with a sparkly/sheer overlay” look. Mindy happily posed with her costars, and with her BFF BJ Novak (ugh), who was there to support her. Mindy has been doing a lot to promote Late Night, and Vanity Fair finally noticed. VF gave Mindy a long interview and write-up about her career and just how groundbreaking she’s been as a writer/actress/lead/producer. You can read the full piece here.

Being an Indian-American pioneer: “I used to think it was more unfair, but now I realize it’s just what my job is. We are supposed to be and enjoy being the pioneers.” “We” means Kaling and her friend Ava DuVernay, whom she met through playing Mrs. Who in DuVernay’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. Kaling has been inspired by DuVernay’s work in supporting other black creators. Kaling also worries that things haven’t changed as much as we want to think. “In terms of directors, we still haven’t seen that diversity,” she says. Furthermore, “I doubt anyone asks white men what they are doing for diversity on-screen.”

On the criticisms that she only cast white guys as her love interests: Kaling says she has grappled with these criticisms, and, looking back, says she might have cast those roles differently. But at the time these story lines simply felt true to her own experiences—“White guys were the ones who hit on me, Indian men didn’t.”

Her love of rom-coms: “I never saw myself in these movies, a chubby, nerdy Indian girl getting the guy at the end. They were a sort of wish fulfillment…. Not everyone who finds love is, like, a size six. They exist, you just don’t see it on TV.”

What happened when she was chosen as one of People’s Most Beautiful in 2011: They didn’t have a dress for her at the shoot. “I went to the bathroom and just cried,” she says. “It was just seen as this impossible thing to dress a woman who’s a size eight.” Today, Kaling demands better. An avid fashion junkie, if she walks into a shoot and they don’t have her size, she walks out. “I’m like, ‘I don’t need to do the shoot. It’s not helping me that much.’”

On being a single mother: She also isn’t interested in the questions surrounding her choices in motherhood. Kaling is currently raising her daughter as a single mother. There has been much speculation about who the father of the baby might be, whether she used donor sperm, etc.—the sort of prying that is not really anybody’s business. She explains that she wants to talk to her daughter about these things first, before she tells anyone else.

On vacations: “I can’t just go to a beach resort and lie there, because I need stimulation too much. It doesn’t have to be work stimulation, but I can’t be still, I can’t be alone with my thoughts.”

[From Vanity Fair]

“I doubt anyone asks white men what they are doing for diversity on-screen…” This is so true, and Mindy always says it – it’s not enough that she’s breaking new ground as an Indian-American woman – a comedy writer, producer and actress – who develops her own sh-t and creates, but she’s held to the standard of “why aren’t you doing this and this and this for other people?” And white men in her position aren’t asked that. They just aren’t. Look no further than that Seth Rogen GQ interview, where GQ made him sound like a genius for producing a million comedies starring white bros, and there was no conversation about race or diversity. Also, I love what she says about rom-coms and wish fulfillment and representing different kinds of people who fall in love.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and WENN.

We had a lot of fun here a couple of weeks ago and then again last week over the casting drama for The Batman. In the end, as we know, Robert Pattinson was confirmed to be the next Bruce Wayne. But there was a curious back and forth between him and Nicholas Hoult that played out in real time that ma…

We had a lot of fun here a couple of weeks ago and then again last week over the casting drama for The Batman. In the end, as we know, Robert Pattinson was confirmed to be the next Bruce Wayne. But there was a curious back and forth between him and Nicholas Hoult that played out in real time that ma…

We had a lot of fun here a couple of weeks ago and then again last week over the casting drama for The Batman. In the end, as we know, Robert Pattinson was confirmed to be the next Bruce Wayne. But there was a curious back and forth between him and Nicholas Hoult that played out in real time that ma…

Having a lovely time with my Goddess @princessmarthalouise at the wedding in #denmark?? Super excited for our tour coming after this. To travel around different parts of #skandinavia is such a joy. We will come back and do the rest of tour to other places at a later date. So blessed up for sharing love with so many Lit? powerful leaders of legacy who are fired up to make great strides and change on planet Earth. ?Tribe what are you Lit ?up about in your life right now?

A post shared by Shaman Durek (@shamandurek) on May 19, 2019 at 2:29am PDT

A few weeks ago, we talked about Norwegian Princess Martha and how she had fallen in love with a sixth-generation shaman. Shaman Durek seems to be a shaman to the stars – his Instagram page is full of photos with celebrities, in addition to Princess Martha’s testimonials about Shaman Durek’s healing powers. Martha and Shaman Durek are on tour together – they’re doing joint speaking engagements in Europe, and I would imagine that the ticket price for those happenings are probably pretty pricey. But Shaman Durek wants us to know that he’s not a CELEBRITY shaman, or a shaman to celebrities only. No, he’s a shaman of the people. We know this because he spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail about it.

A shaman, who is dating Princess Martha Louise of Norway, led a workshop in London this weekend, where he drove out negative spirits from people’s bodies and minds. Shaman Durek, 44, from Los Angeles, who believes he is a bridge to the spiritual world, led a two-hour workshop at London’s Olympia during the Mind, Body and Spirit wellness festival.

Speaking to FEMAIL ahead of the workshop, the guru, who has worked with celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Selma Blair, said that he’s not chasing a high profile, despite his relationship with the daughter of King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway. Talking about his famous clients he said: ‘They are not celebrities to me they are just friends. My relationships with them aren’t any different to relationships with others. People always say “You’re the celebrity shaman,” but when I hear that I just gag. I’m the people’s shaman. I’m not here to be your Gucci bag. I’m not here to be your next idol or your “guru”.

Durek, who said he started seeing spirits at just five, then took workshop participants through a 20-minute exercise where he instructed the spirits of ‘negative ancestors’ to leave them, with some showing physical signs of ridding the spirits, such as bodily convulsions and muscle spasms. The shaman, who publicly declared his relationship on social media with Princess Martha Louise of Norway this month, said his role was to ‘observe life, connect people to their ancestors and observe what is needed to lift and shift people – we are the ambassadors of the spirit world.’

[From The Daily Mail]

If you’ve shaman-ed to Gwyneth Paltrow, I’m sorry but you’re probably an elitist shaman. Gwyneth would never deign to speak to The People’s Shaman. She would only speak to the most A-list Shaman she could find. Again, I have to ask – if he claims to be the People’s Shaman, does he shaman for free to those of us who can’t afford a good shaman? Or is he only shamaning to paying customers? Hmmm.

A post shared by Shaman Durek (@shamandurek) on Feb 1, 2019 at 6:51pm PST

Photos courtesy of Instagram.

Someone hit Tracy Morgan $2 million dollar Bugatti he just bought today ? pic.twitter.com/DMw42UFszq

— ?? (@icydrip) June 4, 2019

Do you guys have a dream car? That’s the car you imagine you’ll buy when you hit it big. For me it’s a Tesla. If I’m going to spend that much on a car I want it to be able to drive itself. Plus I don’t care how much money I will potentially have, it feels gross to spend more than five figures on a car. What about seven figures though? Tracy Morgan bought a car worth more than my dream home, a $2 million Bugatti, in New York City yesterday. It wasn’t even new! It’s a 2012 Veyron. That’s insane, but he has that amount of cash to spend and it’s his money. Within an hour of driving it off the lot he got sideswiped by an SUV. Page Six has the details. (TMZ also has some photos and news. They claim he’d only had it for 15 minutes before he was hit.)

Just an hour after comedian Tracy Morgan bought a new, $2 million Bugatti in Manhattan Tuesday, a New Jersey driver in a cheap Honda smacked into his luxury ride.

He was driving the ritzy new ride at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue around 1:37 p.m. when a woman in a late-model Honda CRV tried to make a right turn from the left lane and smacked into the “30 Rock” luminary’s fresh-off-the-lot ride, police and witnesses said.

“He said he got it literally an hour ago and he paid $2 million for it,” witness Chris Ricciardelli, 31, told The Post. “He just bought it, dude, and it’s pretty scraped up. It still had a dealer tag.”

Morgan had just bought the pre-owned 2012 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport a few blocks away at Manhattan Motorcars 30 minutes to an hour before the crash, workers there said.

Photos show the Bugatti’s front, driver’s-side wheel well scratched and dented where the cheaper car crashed into it.

Several witnesses blamed the other driver, who had New Jersey plates, but the woman was not charged, according to police.

“She ran into him. She was on her phone,” said a 23-year-old witness who gave the name Antoinette.

[Page Six]

Tracy is ok, he complained of hip pain according to a witness who spoke to Page Six, but his rep said that he’s doing fine and is in no pain and he tweeted something similar. He was treated in an ambulance was not transported to hospital. Photos and video back up Page Six’s account that the Honda was in the left lane cutting Tracy’s car off, but Page Six spoke to the other driver and she blamed Tracy, saying he hit her! If she was taking a right turn from the left lane she was in the wrong. Page Six also has video of Tracy going off on the other driver right after the accident, which is totally understandable.

Can you imagine how much it will cost to replace a panel on a freaking $2 million car? Maybe they can buff it out. Just the parts for the Veyron are crazy expensive of course, not to mention the highly specialized labor. It costs $20k for an OIL CHANGE! TMZ reports that there were not visible dents in the car, just scratches. I’ve driven in NYC and question why anyone would want to own an expensive car there. Maybe Tracy wanted an incredible car that was also very safe though. He survived that terrible accident in 2014 where his friend was killed. I’m glad he’s ok.

Thanks for any concern but I am totally fine. My NEW CAR? We shall see. Love you all.

— Tracy Morgan (@TracyMorgan) June 4, 2019

The photo above is of Tracy last month in another car (IDK if he traded it in or sold it), a Lamborghini. Those cost at least six figures, which isn’t bad comparatively. Credit: Backgrid. Other photos credit: WENN

Prince Harry recently traveled to Rome to play a polo match for charity. The money raised went to Sentebale, his signature charity in Lesotho. Harry played with Nacho Figueras, the famous Argentine polo player. Nacho and Harry have been friends for years. Nacho went to Harry’s wedding, they’ve played polo for charity before, and they are quite friendly. Nacho sort of snapped on this trip – he was asked a lot about WHY Harry “abandoned” his wife and newborn child to play polo and Nacho was like “Are you f–king joking, this is for charity.” And thus, Nacho proved his loyalty and I think Harry has basically authorized Nacho to speak out on all things Sussex, much like Meghan has authorized certain friends to speak on her behalf and in her interests. That explains Nacho’s CBS This Morning interview. Some quotes:

Why he defended Harry for leaving Meghan & Archie for a few days: “How dare that guy, you know, tells a father who loves his child and is leaving his house for 24 hours and he’s going to raise money for thousands of vulnerable children in Africa. How dare he say something like that. It bothers me how these guys change the narrative of the thing. If you don’t pay attention and respond … strongly, that’s the story. That’s the headline. I think this is a problem because otherwise, you know, we’re all distracted. We’re all, with our lives looking at our phones or you go through your Instagram or your news thing and then you read, ‘oh he left his house, he left his family.’ That’s what stays in your head. You receive this information, it’s edited in a way and you process it that way. We’re smart enough to know, but kids who are not focused to understand the real situation would take it in like that, so I think it’s crazy.”

The narratives bugged him: He thought it was important to speak up for them because they’re so often “misinterpreted,” adding, “It bothered me a lot…The headlines and the narrative is about them, you know, not getting along with so and so or not doing this or not doing that, is the baby sleeping or not sleeping. How about this guy, both of them, wake up every morning and all they think about is helping children.”

Nacho says Harry doesn’t like plastic: “He was there and we were at the hotel where we spent the night before the game. He talked to a person and said ‘this morning I got my coffee and I saw that you have a plastic thing on the coffee. And then I also sent my shirt and I got my shirt in a big plastic bag.’” Figueras revealed that after that the prince said to hotel staffers, “’Can we please not use the plastic?’ So that’s this guy, okay. I don’t like to talk about that at all, that’s who he is. That’s who they are. No plastic. That’s who he is. That’s who they are.”

[From CBS News]

Yes, Nacho is here. Nacho got the talking points! I don’t hate that – clearly, Meghan has learned over the past two years that the old-school royal courtiers will not protect her, and the old-school tools of communication will not work. Diana realized the same thing too, and she went outside of the royal bubble and authorized friends to speak for her. Harry has learned that lesson too. And really, if Meghan is fine with Harry going away for a few nights for charity, then everybody else should be fine with it too. It’s not like Baby Archie is suddenly going to start walking and talking at one month old.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty.