As mentioned yesterday, A Star is Born world premieres in Venice tonight and we’ll have a solid idea then how far it can go during award season. Given what we’ve seen of the campaign strategy so far, I can’t imagine that the film is going to crash and burn out of the first festival. In fact, there a…

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CB has been covering all of the Ben Affleck drama, but she’s generously allowed me a moment to discuss my take on it, in relation to Ben and Matt Damon’s friendship. My take is pretty much the same as it’s always been regarding Ben: he’s an addict, obviously, but besides that, he’s addicted to sabotaging himself. He’s been self-sabotaging for some-odd twenty years. He doesn’t just sabotage his sobriety, he sabotaged his marriage and romantic relationships, his films and work commitments, and he sabotages his friendships too. He’s toxic across the board, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Matt Damon had learned many years ago that Ben really isn’t the ideal best friend. As much as the public wants them to be “Matt & Ben” forever and ever, they’ve grown up and apart since Good Will Hunting. So what do you make of this?

As Ben Affleck seeks treatment for alcohol addiction, his lifelong friend Matt Damon continues to be a big part of his support system. A source tells PEOPLE the actor, 47, “has and will always be there for Ben.”

“They have been friends for years,” the insider says, adding, “Let’s remember that they each have their own families and careers to deal with.”

A second source confirms to PEOPLE Damon has been involved in supporting Affleck since he entered rehab on Aug. 22. Damon is currently filming the movie Ford v. Ferrari in Los Angeles.

The two recently won the screen rights to a true crime story about an ex-cop who rigged the bi-annual McDonald’s Monopoly game in 2001. Affleck is to direct Damon in the project, which marks their first film together in over a decade.

[From People]

“Let’s remember that they each have their own families and careers to deal with…” Yeah, as I was saying. Matt wishes him well. Matt doesn’t want to see Ben in trouble. But Matt also doesn’t want to be infected with Ben’s toxicity at this point. Besides, I’m pretty sure that Matt is all-in with his real best friend Chris Hemsworth these days. They’re so close that Matt has reportedly bought a house close to the Hemsworths in Byron Bay, Australia. Which is completely fair and makes perfect sense – Matt shouldn’t feel like he has to “be there” to support Ben at this moment, just because they were super-tight 20 years ago. Matt has other stuff on his plate.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

Here are some pics from today’s photocall for A Star is Born at the Venice Film Festival. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper arrived a few days ago with their entourages. Bradley brought Irina Shayk and their daughter too, so I suspect that Irina will probably walk the red carpet with B-Coop at the premiere tonight. We’ll have those premiere photos on Sunday or Monday, I don’t know which – we’re taking it easy throughout the three-day holiday weekend here in America, but we’ll have some posts up.

Mostly, I did want to talk about these photocall pics though… look at them! First off, I think the biggest mistake Bradley Cooper has made was shaving off his thick beard. The beard suited him SO MUCH. I genuinely found him attractive with the beard, and I genuinely think he looks asexual without the beard. As for Gaga… what’s going on there? Is that a really weird wig or is that her natural hair and hairline? And I swear to God, every time I see her, her face looks different. This time it’s her lips, mouth and jawline.

While in Venice, Gaga told the creepy makeup story again:

“I remember very, very well, I walked down the stairs of my house before we filmed the screen test for A Star Is Born, and [Cooper] had a makeup wipe in his hand,” she said. “He put his hand on my face, and he went like this… and he said, ‘I want no makeup on your face.’ This vulnerability was something he brought out in me.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I now believe that Bradley came into her house – where the screen test was happening – with the wipe already in hand, and that was always going to be his opening “power move.” He was always going to wipe her makeup off. And it’s gross that he thought about it beforehand.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Late last year when we saw set photos of Hugh Jackman running around as disgraced presidential hopeful Gary Hart, I stacked up his Oscar odds for The Greatest Showman and concluded, “Better luck next year, Hugh.” Well next year is here, and we have a trailer for The Front Runner, which will be scree…

It’s rare that I watch a show past the second season. Shows seem to flail in the third season for some reason and don’t often remain watchable past that point. There are exceptions like Breaking Bad, True Blood (Ok it did suck in the third season but hot guys) and Shameless. I watched Showtime’s Shameless up until season seven, when it just got so ridiculous and complicated that I gave up. (Frank’s fake family!) Season six ended so well too, I was impressed for well past what would have been the expiration point for most shows. (I can’t say the same for Emmy Rossum’s husband’s show, Mr. Robot. That was only good for the first season, when the twist at the end was so ridiculous I gave up. Incidentally we just heard that Mr. Robot is ending after the next fourth season.) Regardless Emmy, who recently fought and earned equal pay on Shameless, has announced that she’s leaving after the ninth season, which will air in two parts, the first starting on September 9th. She’s the lead and while there are so many other strong characters fans are wondering how it will continue without her. She holds the Gallagher family together.

The longest I’ve worked anywhere with other people is about two years. (The exception is this awesome job but we all work from home.) I still have fond memories of that time (the dot com era!) and my friends at that company, which inevitably went out of business. I can’t imagine how close you’d feel to people you work with for eight years, especially when you’re acting with them. Emmy is moving on though and that’s completely understandable. I do wonder if there was some issue with her contract negotiations, but given how we’ve heard that she achieved pay equity that doesn’t seem to be the case. Showtime has issued a response about Emmy leaving, with the showrunner and the president of the show saying how great she’s been to work with and that they’ll miss her. Shameless is Showtime’s highest rated scripted show.

“Emmy Rossum will forever be part of the Shameless family,” showrunner John Wells said Thursday afternoon in a statement. “She has been integral to the show’s success, from her wonderful portrayal of Fiona to her leadership role on set, as well as directing multiple episodes of the series. We are hard at work now creating a season nine finale for Shameless which we hope will provide a Gallagher-worthy sendoff for Fiona that honors the great work Emmy has done. It is always bittersweet when an ensemble member decides to move out of the proverbial house, but our door will always remain open for Fiona to return home for a visit, or to move back in. I look forward to continuing the stories of this wildly unpredictable family and all of us on Shameless will miss Emmy and her wonderful Fiona.”

“We were saddened when Emmy Rossum let us know that the upcoming ninth season of Shameless would be her last,” said Showtime president of programming Gary Levine. “But we are filled with an overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude for Emmy’s inspired work on our series, of course in front of the camera but also behind it. Fiona Gallagher will always be one of Showtime’s iconic characters, and we applaud Emmy for bringing this character to life in such a natural, touching and fearless performance. On behalf of everyone at Showtime and her millions of fans, we thank you Emmy!”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Maybe Emmy realized the show was going downhill and/or she wanted to move on to other things. It’s understandable. It seems like she did everything above board and professional. THR reports that she’s next going to star as Angelyne(!) in a limited series created and written by her husband, Sam Esmail. I don’t know if it’s a good career decision for her to work with her husband, but at least it’s a short-running show. Mr. Robot was excellent for a while. All I know about Angelyne I learned from DListed’s awesome coverage. I would watch this, if only to see Emmy in costume.

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photos credit: WENN, Avalon.red and Getty

When Taylor Swift released Reputation last year, the album was not critically beloved. It wasn’t scorned, to be clear, and there were any number of critics who genuinely liked the album, even if they didn’t think it was her best effort. I remember reading one review which basically said (and I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find it) that Reputation would be a solid effort from any other artist, but in Swifty’s canon, it’s probably her most forgettable. My take was always that Taylor tried to do too much – she veered away from her tried-and-true formula of “petty beefs and blind-item breakup songs.” Reputation was laced with faux bravado, a complete abdication of responsibility for her own actions, petty beefs, and the rollout of Joe Alwyn as her most serious and mature lover.

I also think the album was hurt by Swift’s lack of publicity – she’s the kind of artist who likes to explain her songs and give her fans hints about the blind items. She didn’t give any interviews to support Reputation. There’s something… off-putting about that. She’s not even taking softball questions from a friendly outlet – she just wants to dictate the conversation about herself from here on out. She claimed that “There will be no further explanation. There will be just reputation.” But still, she can’t help herself. She HAS to explain it.

While fans may have initially thought Taylor Swift’s latest album was merely about the complicated reputation she’s acquired, love is actually at the center of the release.

“[I] think there was a bit of a bait-and-switch that happened with this album when we put out ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ and we’re like, ‘Guys, this album is gonna be one thing.’ And when the album came out, it’s legitimately an album about finding love throughout all the noise,” Swift told a crowd of fans at an intimate Taylor Swift Now concert in Chicago, seemingly referencing her relationship with boyfriend Joe Alwyn.

Explaining the journey at the center of reputation, the “Delicate” singer, 28, remarked, “It starts with the noise and how that makes all you feel, and how it makes you feel when people are saying things about you that you feel, like, aren’t true and living your life sort of in defiance of that. And then, sort of, in the middle of the album you kind of realize ‘how much do I really value that?’ If you can find something real in spite of a bad reputation, then isn’t that what matters the most to you. And doesn’t it matter the most to you that you know who your real friends are now?”

[From People]

Eh, that’s one of the better explanations I’ve heard for an album having such massive tonal shifts. Music professionals might think “wow, this album does not sound cohesive,” but Taylor is here to tell you that it totally IS cohesive, in that she has to sing and rap about Kanye West AND sing love songs about Joe Alwyn because… reasons. Because how could she sing about Gorgeous Joe without peppering her lyrics with all of those references to Kanye, huh?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

It’s been a while since Victoria and David Beckham walked a red carpet together. That was just one of the reasons the rumours started up about their marriage at the beginning of the summer. As you know, and as Maria wrote earlier this week, they’ve done the most to shut down the speculation since th…

I’ve been mostly thinking about the US Open and celebrity gossip this week, but I’ve been keeping a low-key eye on Donald Trump. Doesn’t it feel like there’s been another shift? I said, at the time, that it felt like there was a shift right after the Treason Summit in Helsinki earlier this summer. And now there’s a bookend in the last weeks of summer with John McCain’s death and how Trump mishandled it. Like, this time he actually alienated veterans groups and Republicans. I still say that of all the dumb and treasonous crap Trump does on a daily basis, I still think he was actually *trying* to be somewhat respectful of the McCain family. I mean, the bar is set so low, I get that, but he didn’t hate-tweet about McCain or anything. Anyway, Trump must have been worried, because he gave an interview to Bloomberg and defended his reaction to McCain’s death:

Asked if he missed an opportunity to unite the country and made a mistake, Trump disagreed.

“No, I don’t think I did at all,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News in the Oval Office. “I’ve done everything that they requested and no, I don’t think I have at all. We had our disagreements and they were very strong disagreements. I disagreed with many of the things that I assume he believed in.”

Asked if McCain would have been a better president [than Obama], Trump declined to say, even as his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stared at him.

“I don’t want to comment on it,” he said. “I have a very strong opinion, all right.”

Sanders, he joked, was “having a nervous breakdown” over his response. “Maybe I’ll give you that answer some day later.”

[From Bloomberg]

What’s funny – to me – is that I’ve gotten to the point where I flat-out expect Trump to be a blathering idiot and to constantly say and do the most offensive things. This shows that he’s actually aware enough to keep his mouth shut instead of tell some pleasant lie about how much he respected McCain. He didn’t respect McCain. He hated McCain. In the same interview, Trump was asked about the possibility – and likelihood – of impeachment. His response:

“I don’t think they can impeach somebody that’s doing a great job. You look at the economy, you look at jobs, you look at foreign, what’s going on with other countries. You look at trade deals. I’m doing a great job.”

Trump said that if he’s impeached, then every future president would be in danger of the same fate whenever the opposition gains control of Congress.

“So you get elected as a Republican or a Democrat and the opposite party gets put into the House. That would mean, oh, let’s impeach him. Can’t do it,” Trump said. “If you look at the definition of impeachment, that’s a high bar and that would take a long time to fight that if you’re doing a good job. And I’m doing a great job.”

[From Bloomberg]

LOL. I’m not even going to bother. This week has been full of shenanigans, right? All of the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Bigly back together again. Speaking of, the Washington Post just released new polling numbers: Trump is historically unpopular, with 60% of Americans saying they “disapprove” of him. A majority of Americans support Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation, and 49% say that Congress should begin impeachment proceedings. You can read more about the poll numbers here.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Dear Gossips,

Peter Kavinsky, wait, no, I’m sorry, Noah Centineo did a photo shoot with puppies but that wasn’t the best thing I watched online yesterday. I mean, it was great. And here’s a screenshot of it…

…which of course when it finally comes out in full I will drop everything to watch…

Jennifer Garner is promoting Peppermint, her action revenge film directed by Taken’s Pierre Morel and written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen, not a good recommendation for his skills). She did a brief video interview with People about training physically for the role and about her character’s motivation. I came away from this wanting to know more about her MMA training in particular. I sometimes do dance workouts on PopSugar fitness with her aerobics trainer, Simone De La Rue, and I would be interested in the other stuff she did to get so fit. (I think it’s specific to stunts for this this film though and I hate burpees and weight lifting so I don’t know why I care.) Garner leans heavily into the mom fighting for her family angle, which makes me think she took this role to help further her image. It will likely work, especially if it’s well received. Here’s some of what she said and you can see the video on People.

“I was excited right from the jump. The first time I read the script for Peppermint because it’s an original story and there’s a strong woman at the middle.

“My character, Riley, watches this happen in front of her. She sees the people who killed her family,” Garner says. “She discovers the police and the people who should be helping her are all on the wrong side of the law.

“I was excited right from the jump. The first time I read the script for Peppermint because it’s an original story and there’s a strong woman at the middle.

“My character, Riley, watches this happen in front of her. She sees the people who killed her family,” Garner says. “She discovers the police and the people who should be helping her are all on the wrong side of the law.

“I’ve been training for a while on this. I did MMA skills, gun skills, knife skills. It was the connection to the physical that made me kind of understand her fight for her daughter. The action is smart and the fights are smart and they’re all me. What would you fight for more than your family?”

[From People]

Notice how she said that her character was fighting for her daughter, even though her character’s husband was killed too. I’ve been thinking about the fact that Ben’s rehab stay ended up happening right before Jen’s movie premiere. I’m sure it was just a coincidence, but it made her seem stronger and more able to fight for her family, you know? You wonder sometimes if celebrities end up playing roles in their personal lives to fit the image they’re trying to portray and if they’re even aware of it. Even when I was barely dabbling in Facebook I noticed was making choices that would make for better photos and posts. Imagine how it would be if you had millions of Instagram followers, photographers following you around all day and the press covering your family outings.

Speaking of content for social media, Jen recently went to Cincinnati, Ohio to ask shoppers at an area Kroger (grocery store) if they wanted to try her organic baby food, Once Upon a Farm. She wasn’t wearing makeup and was unrecognizable (to non gossip fans, all of us would recognize her) to shoppers, who invariably turned her down. We know this because of her Instagram story about it. Whose idea was it to ask shoppers to try baby food? The market is moms, not average people shopping, and most people won’t have occasion to ever buy baby food after they’re past the parenting stage. Plus, even moms don’t usually want to try baby food because it tastes terrible. It makes for a cute video of Jennifer Garner getting turned down. Some Kroger employees tried it, as did a sweet baby. You can see her video on Instagram if you follow her today, and here are some screenshots.

Photos credit: WENN, screenshots from People video and Instagram/Jennifer Garner