Prince Charles had a difficult relationship with both his father and his mother. Only his grandmother, the Queen Mum, seemed to really “understand” him, and then Lord Mountbatten certainly took over as the pivotal father figure in Charles’ life. Following the Diana years, it is my impression that Charles became a lot closer to both of his parents. That might just be Charles’ PR, but it did seem like Charles still checked in with his father about family issues, and Charles has basically taken over as Regent in everything but name. They haven’t said whether Charles was there, inside Windsor Castle, when his father passed away. It’s believed that he was called to Windsor Friday morning:

Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, was seen leaving Windsor Castle hours after the news of his father’s passing. The Prince of Wales, 72, drove from his Highgrove Estate in Gloucestershire to the 94-year-old monarch’s Berkshire residence ahead of the public announcement of the duke’s passing. Sitting in the front passenger seat of a silver Tesla, the prince looked on as he pulled away. It is not known whether Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, had accompanied him on what is their 16th wedding anniversary.

A source close to Charles said he was ‘comforted’ by the fact he and his father had been in touch more regularly than ever in recent weeks and months – and that they ‘had said all the things that needed to be said’. The source said: ‘It is some small comfort today that the prince was in much more regular contact with his father in recent weeks and months than he otherwise might have been. He was the only family member who was able to visit him in hospital and he was at Windsor as recently as the week before last. They spoke a great deal.’

Friends were at pains to point out that the relationship between father and son was also warmer than it had ever been. One said: ‘The idea that their relationship was strained, certainly in recent years, couldn’t have been further from the truth. And that’s an important thing to remember in all that is being written. There was genuine love, affection and understanding there. Which is all anyone holds dear at the end.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I remember in 2019, Charles went to Wood Farm (in Sandringham) for a big discussion with his father about… Prince Andrew. The Queen’s favorite child. I believe Charles sought his father’s permission to pressure Andrew to resign from royal duties, which happened shortly after the Wood Farm meeting. I was surprised that Charles still consulted his dad about those kinds of things, because Philip not only resigned from public life, he also resigned from his role as family-enforcer. He just wanted to live the rest of his days peacefully at Wood Farm.

Charles also released this video about his father this weekend:

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Prince Philip’s funeral has been set for April 17th, next Saturday. The funeral – which is not a state funeral – will be held at St. George’s Chapel, which is on the grounds of the Windsor Castle complex. It will be broadcast live and I would assume most British channels will cover it, and perhaps even a few American and Commonwealth channels will too. They’re planning a smaller gathering, “much reduced in scale with no public access” because of Covid restrictions. We’re also hearing more about Philip’s final weeks at Windsor, following his release from the hospital in mid-March.

Prince Philip spent much his final days sleeping, according to a new report — but in his best waking hours, he soaked in the sun with a blanket on his lap and Queen Elizabeth at his side, according to a new report. And she was at his bedside when his end came at Windsor Castle on Friday morning at age 99, the UK’s Telegraph reported of Philip. The Duke of Edinburgh had insisted, according to the Telegraph, that he would die in his own bed.

“There were moments of great lucidity and joyful togetherness,” even toward the end, wrote Richard Kay, Editor-at-Large at the Daily Mail and a former top royal correspondent and gossip columnist there. He could walk, though with difficulty and using a cane.

“Occasionally, he would allow himself to be pushed in a wheelchair, but staff were very wary of suggesting it,” Kay wrote. “When it first appeared in the private rooms he shouted: ‘Get that bloody thing out of my sight,’ recalls an aide. Philip ate little, Kay’s report said, and had discontinued the 7:30 a.m. tray of morning tea traditionally delivered to his bed by a valet or page. And he declined many of the other trays of food that would be brought up later in the day.

But on his best days, as recently as early this week, he still read and wrote letters. And he’d dress in a shirt, pressed trousers and polished shoes, and ask for a chair to be brought outside. There in the sunshine, overlooking the castle’s scenic grounds, he’d nod off “with a rug over his legs,” the report said. At the very end, his last wish was fulfilled — to die in the comforts of home, instead of in the hospital, as a royal source told The Post.

[From The NY Post]

The Mail’s sources confirmed that the Queen was at his bedside when he passed, and sources say that he began to deteriorate rapidly throughout Thursday, the day and the evening. Some suggested taking him back to the hospital but the Queen refused, likely because she knew his wishes and knew he would prefer to die in his own bed. One source said: “He spent most of the four weeks he was in hospital trying to get home. They operated on his heart in a bid to give him a little longer, maybe with the 100th birthday in mind. But he didn’t really care about that… There is no way he would have wanted to die in hospital.”

Reportedly, the Queen knew it was coming and she had been preparing herself for it. Her former press secretary Charles Ansen told People: “She would have thought about this moment several times, and her way would be to remain as steady and as calm as possible. That comes naturally to her through her temperament and her experience. In my years of working for her she was always calm, no matter what was going on. But for any human being, this is a very cathartic moment.”

The official Windsor IG posted this as well. Lovely photo by Annie Leibovitz.

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Twenty years ago, the Academy Awards were still pretty fun. They were a glamorous event and a hot ticket. People saved their best looks for the Oscars and it didn’t feel like you had already seen the nominees at a million awards shows beforehand. At the 2001 Oscars, there was even a big surprise winner: Marcia Gay Harden! MGH won the Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lee Krasner in Pollock, directed by her friend Ed Harris (who also played Jackson Pollock). The film itself is very good, and very much a labor of love and a tour-de-force performance by Harris. But Harden is excellent, and she deserved the Oscar. She was up against Kate Hudson in Almost Famous (most people though Kate would win), Judi Dench (Chocolat), Frances McDormand (Almost Famous) and Julie Walters (Billy Elliott). The reaction to Harden’s name being called is still pretty iconic! So, anyway, I enjoyed this retrospective interview with Harden in Vulture, twenty years after her surprise win. She even spills some tea about one of her fellow nominees being less than pleased with her. Some highlights:

She didn’t really understand the Oscar campaign thing: “Well, please understand, at that moment, I was a complete Oscar ignoramus. Positioning, campaigning — all of those things were completely new to me. I didn’t know that they had people at five in the morning that announced the Oscar nominations. I knew you’d take out ads, but I thought, Doesn’t everybody? I didn’t know how deeply [Sony Pictures Classics co-president] Michael Barker was behind the film. I knew he liked my performance, and I knew he and Ed had worked together in editing to allow Lee Krasner to have a little more resonance.”

She was traveling everywhere: “But then it started being in the running, and I had a wonderful publicist at the time, Carri McClure, who understood all of this. I was busy traveling around the country doing the media thing — going to Texas and Cincinnati, wherever. My mindset was, “Oh great, I’ll go to Texas and get to see my mom! How much fun! Oh my God, they’re flying me everywhere!” Even though I was an established actress at that point, I don’t think I’d ever been on the kind of media tours that Pollock was putting me on.

She hadn’t even been nominated for a SAG Award or Golden Globe: “That’s right. It was only the New York Critics Award. I didn’t know how that would balance the scale. I knew the odds in Vegas were really great against me by the time they came up.

She thought it was unlikely she would win: “Oh, it was unlikely in my brain. It was a dream that Ed would win, and I was thrilled to be there. They all say, “It’s easy to say that when you’ve won an Oscar.” But for me, that night was the win. And then winning was the win!

Who did she think would win? “Kate [Hudson]. Yeah, and by the way, everybody deserves to win. In that moment, everybody has presented such worthy performances that it’s really hard to tell. I would have felt really happy for anyone because each has a moment in their performance that you’re like, “Yep, yep, yep.” When they called my name, it was a blur. When you go through the footage, you can still see my dad standing up well into the thank-you speech going, “Bravo!” Somebody behind him said, “Sir, you must sit down!” I was like, “Please don’t let it be Scorsese.”

Her speech began with “what a thrill”: “That was the one unscripted line. I will tell you that I did kind of mess up because I had my little crumpled sheet in my hand. I’d rehearsed it in the car, but I thanked my husband after my lawyer and everybody laughed and I didn’t understand why. Maybe because it made him seem like he was second.

Her fellow nominees were happy, with one exception: “It’s new blood. It just felt great. And by the way, I felt the girls were really happy for me as well. There was one I will not mention — but it wasn’t Kate — who seemingly wasn’t so happy.

Whether the one person was Julie Walters: “It’s not her….Mm-hmm. But I would never say anything negative because what a night, right?

So it’s either Frances McDormand and Judi Dench: “And I’m friends with Frances McDormand. There you go…Frances doesn’t give a sh-t. But I don’t want to say anything negative about anybody, honestly. It was my perception that somebody wasn’t so happy, but you never know what people have going on. Whatever. However, I’m a big one for effusive congratulations. That’s who I am. I’m just so happy for other people in their wins and their glories. For me, there’s plenty of room at the top. Sometimes you just accept that life rolls along and things come to you when they should.

[From Vulture]

So…it’s not that Judi Dench said or did anything particularly rude or shady, it’s that Dench wasn’t effusive or nice to Marcia that night? That’s interesting! I would have thought it was Julie Walters as well, but maybe Julie was relieved. And Kate came into that Oscars as the sure-thing, everybody’s favorite, etc. The fact that she didn’t win was a BIG deal. But it’s nice that Kate wasn’t shady to Marcia afterwards. Oh, the video!! And that incredible Randolph Duke gown which looked incredible on her. So sexy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Sorry for the bummer ahead of the weekend but this is a PSA for those of us in Canada because our COVID situation here is… really bad, like coming close to the worst it’s ever been. Where I live, in Ontario, we just posted a 30% increase in new cases in JUST ONE DAY. And it’s not just in this provin…

Not that any of us are looking for parenting advice from Kristen Cavallari, but there was an US Weekly headline so regressive it caught my eye: “Kristen Cavallari Says It Is Harder Raising Girls Than Boys: It’s A Lot of Drama.” Her daughter is 5. Um, WTF, is this still a thing? Again, I’m not lookin…

I have tried to stay away from any In the Heights content because I want to be surprised when I finally see it on my screen, but when Lainey sent me this Variety piece detailing the challenges of turning this Broadway hit into a film, I couldn’t help myself. The article had me from the hook: “When L…

Last night, Doja Cat dropped a sugary, disco-inspired new track, “Kiss Me More”, featuring SZA. It’s the first single from her third studio album, Planet HER, due out this summer. She’s delivered verses on a few tracks in 2021, including Ariana Grande’s “34+35 (Remix)” and Saweetie’s “Best Friend”, …

Filming for Hawkeye is under way in Georgia, bringing us our first clear shots of Alaqua Cox on set as Maya Lopez, aka Echo. (Interestingly, there was an industry-wide outcry in 2019 when the Georgia state legislature attempted to severely restrict reproductive rights, but in the wake of Georgia’s d…

Anne Boleyn, starring Jodie Turner-Smith, is expected to air on the UK’s Channel 5 later this year. Previously, we saw a still photo of JTS as the erstwhile queen, and now we have a shot of her in motion, walking down a hall: Variety also has a new image of JTS as Anne and Mark Stanley as Henry VIII…

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I love everything about Cardi B’s Interview Magazine cover and profile. The photoshoot is great, and they really wanted Cardi to glam it up, and I love that for her. Then the interview was conducted by none other than Mariah Carey! I never knew I wanted to read a conversation between Mariah and Cardi before now. They’re lovely together – Mariah surprised me here because she took Cardi seriously from the word go. Mariah asks substantive questions and got Cardi to open up on self-image, plastic surgery, stripping and tons of other stuff. You can read the full piece here (I would recommend it). Some highlights:

Pandemic life: “During the pandemic, the average day is me waking up with a lot of ideas in my head, so I’m always calling my team, trying to make whatever I have in my head happen, or I’m wondering about a business venture so I call my lawyer. And sometimes I go on Twitter, I go to blogs, I see what’s going on in the world. I try to stay off it most of the time, because sometimes it’s such a bad vibe. I usually wake up around noon and my daughter wakes up at 3:00 p.m., so I really have no time to just work, work, work, work.

Insecurity & plastic surgery: “Even when I was 18 and became a dancer, I had enough money to afford to buy boobs, so every insecurity that I felt about my breasts was gone. When I was 20, I went to the urban strip club, and in the urban strip clubs, you had to have a big butt. So I felt insecure about that. It took me back to high school. So I got my ass done. And then I felt super confident. When I was younger, I didn’t really know how to take care of my hair. So now I make my own hair mask and take care of my natural hair, and it makes me feel better, like what people were saying about me isn’t true. My hair was not bad because it was nappy. My hair was bad because I didn’t know how to take care of it.

Whether she cares what her parents say: “I’m grown now. When I told my mom I was a stripper that really bothered her for a minute. But now when she hears me saying grown sh-t, I don’t think she gives a f–k anymore. I think she didn’t want me to grow up so fast, because the kids around my neighborhood grew up fast.

Her relationship with her fans: “Last year, because I hadn’t put out music for a long time, social media was saying, “She’s over. I told you she was only going to last this and that amount. She’s so mediocre.” So I used to ask some of my fans, “You think it’s really over for me?” They gave me encouragement, like, “I don’t think you really understand who you are.” I get a lot of hate on social media, so if I feel the pressure, I know my fans feel the pressure of constantly defending my ass. I feel a close connection to them because my team doesn’t always know what’s going on, my husband doesn’t really understand social media, but my fans understand. That’s their world. I totally [read the comments]. Not like before. Two years ago, Mariah, let me tell you, every single time somebody said some crazy sh-t, I would flame their ass right back. I’m more calm now.

Whether she’s felt racism in the industry: “I don’t know if I would use the word “racism,” because everything is so technical right now. I have felt prejudice. I have been involved in endorsement deals, and then I found out that certain white people got more money for their deals from the same company. I do my research. I know how much money I made that company. My fans buy my sh-t. So it’s like,“When you’re not paying me what you’re paying these other people, why is that?” It’s kind of insulting.

[From Interview]

Cardi and Mariah talk a lot about their childhoods. Mariah talks about feeling like an outsider in both the white community and Black community. Cardi made it sound like she didn’t have the exact same experience – her experience was that she wasn’t “Dominican enough” or “Trinidadian enough” for those communities, she made it sound more like prejudice and shame within her own communities. It was interesting, and you could tell that both women were really into their larger conversation. Mariah also asked Cardi to do a bra line with her. Cardi didn’t seem interested, lol. Also: I love that Cardi fully admits to checking out blogs for industry/celebrity gossip AND that she reads her social media comments.

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