Is it OK if I don’t want to be an expert in whatever the f-ck is happening with Armie Hammer because every update is worse than the one before and man, Elizabeth Chambers, I hope she had a really great support system because this is such a nightmare for her and their children. (Pajiba)   It’s not th…

Pour one out for Iker Casillas and Sara Carbonero. If you’ve been visiting this site over the last decade or so, you know they were once an obsession of mine. Their split was confirmed last week and then I got distracted by the Grammys and there have been other priorities this week so I haven’t give…

Like her mom, Kate Hudson is known to throw a great party (her Halloween bashes are a highlight every year). If I had to choose one celebrity birthday to attend, I think it would be hers. The guest list would be amazing and she would have lots of drinks and snacks, plus good music.   This woman is “…

I typically like to test products out before I write about them but I couldn’t help myself this time because I feel like I need to put Satya Organic on your radar STAT. I came across this proudly Indigenous-owned company a few weeks ago and after analysing all the reviews, I feel pretty confident th…

Lana Condor asks people to check in on their Asian friends. [Buzzfeed]
Jennifer Lopez & Alex Rodriguez are allegedly still engaged but “taking things slowly.” I bet that changes within the next week! [LaineyGossip]
Ellen DeGeneres signed a multi-year deal with Discovery & Discovery+. [Dlisted]
Trailer for Four Good Days, an opioid drama starring Mila Kunis. [Just Jared]
Ryan Reynolds live-tweeted his first time watching Green Lantern. [Pajiba]
Trans youth sports debate dominates discussion of the Equality Act. [Towleroad]
Dove Cameron, in a mask, doing stunt training. [Egotastic]
A Chanel collection inspired by the late Stella Tennant. [Go Fug Yourself]
Teen Vogue’s editor-in-chief Alexi McCammond steps down after only a few weeks on the job. Her racist & homophobic tweets came back to haunt her. [Jezebel]
Rosamund Pike’s peekaboo elbows. She’s so delightfully weird. [RCFA]
Kris Jenner breaks down her iconic looks. [OMG Blog]
Love After Lockup’s Clint Brady is out of jail. [Starcasm]

Wake up… your Asian friends and family are deeply scared, horrified, sick to their stomachs and wildly angry. Please please please check in on us, please please please stand with us. Please. Your Asian friend needs you, even if they aren’t publicly grieving on social media. x

— Lana Condor (@lanacondor) March 17, 2021

Here we have what appears to be the first sighting of Ryan Gosling on the set of The Gray Man – and he looks GOOD. He’s behind a mask but you can tell, already, that at this stage for his character, he’ll be clean-shaven, hair properly styled, like Crazy Stupid Love vibes.  By the way, that movie ce…

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, as we know, have been relentlessly targeted by the UK tabloids, and they’ve been pushing back. They’ve sued the Sun and the Daily Mail and they spoke to Oprah during the Television Event of the Year about the British royals’ fear of the tabloid press and alluded to th…

Kim Kardashian agreed to an interview with the Good Morning Vogue series, and I’m including the video at the end of the post. I mean, love it or hate it but Vogue takes Kim Kardashian seriously. They interview her the same way they’d interview an actress or a socialite. I actually enjoy the interview more because Jonathan Van Meter (the Vogue journalist conducting the GMV interview) takes her seriously and asks her substantive questions about Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It’s better than someone trying to make fun of Kim or act cooler than her or whatever. Kim chatted about a number of things, including KUWTK’s last season (airing right now), Martha Stwart, attending the Met Gala for the first time and her attitude during the pandemic. Some highlights:

Life returning to “normal” post-pandemic: “I think this year has been challenging for so many people but I also think that this year was a huge cleanse and just a huge opportunity for people to really be grateful for the simple things and that is a huge — I think awakening that some people had…. I always try to look at things in a positive way. Even though it has been such a challenging year, it’s a time to regenerate, get creative, spend so much time with family and just this time I’ve been able to spend with my children has been priceless. That part has been so beautiful.”

Celebrities love SKIMS, her shapewear line: “I’ll never forget. I’m obsessed with Martha Stewart. So I was walking in New York and I hear, ‘Kim! Kim!’ And I turn around and she’s like, ‘I just need SKIMS. I love it!’ I was like, anything for you! It was just such a proud moment that Martha Stewart wanted SKIMS.”

Wearing the floral Givenchy gown while pregnant at her first Met Gala: “When I went to my first Met Ball the theme was punk and I was like what is this? What am I gonna wear? I would have done anything to go so I was just to be happy to be dressed up,” the star, who famously wore a floral printed Givenchy gown and gloves while pregnant with daughter North, remembers. Givenchy’s then-creative director Riccardo Tisci told Kardashian to just embrace the grungy, punk mindset. “He was just like, ‘F–k it, you’re punk.’ Like, it is what it is. And I get that. As I’m I think more confident in myself, I get that more. I think punk is just an attitude of not giving a f–k. [It’s] not being not mindful of people and feelings — it doesn’t mean you’re a total a–hole. It just means that you live your life your way and beat to your own drum. Hopefully, that inspires people to want to do that for themselves.”

[From Page Six and People]

Yeah, the floral Givenchy was not punk. It’s fine because it was years ago and people don’t actually care anymore, but it wasn’t punk. Riccardo Tisci kind of screwed her over on that one. As for her humble-bragging about SKIMS… I’ve said it before, but she finally found a niche market in which she’s flourished. I mean, shapewear isn’t really “niche” but Kim has tried so many different things, it sometimes feels like she fell backwards into a massively successful business completely at random. I keep hearing that SKIMS is a good-quality line though, for whatever that’s worth.

Photos courtesy of Kim’s IG, Avalon Red, Vogue.

The American political media is bored, can you tell? They actually *miss* that terrible orange monster and they’re scared that the Biden Administration’s “return to competence” will make them lose ratings and subscribers. For the past week or so, reporters have been trying to make “Biden needs to do a press conference” into a big story and it’s just like… is that all you’ve got? I don’t need to see Biden do a press conference. I feel like he’s at his best when he can take his time and answer questions, usually one on one. Which is why the White House got him to do a sit-down interview with George Stephanopoulos for Nightline/ABC News. It was a wide-ranging interview about foreign policy, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Russian interference in the 2016 & 2020 elections, vaccines and Major Biden being a good boy. Some highlights:

Getting the politics out of vaccinations: “I honest to God thought we had it out. I honest to God thought that, once we guaranteed we had enough vaccine for everybody, things would start to calm down. Well, they have calmed down a great deal. But I don’t quite understand – you know – I just don’t understand this sort of macho thing about, ‘I’m not gonna get the vaccine. I have a right as an American, my freedom to not do it.’ Well, why don’t you be a patriot? Protect other people.”

On Russia’s election interference & Vlad Putin: “He will pay a price. We had a long talk, he and I, when we — I know him relatively well. And the conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.”

When asked “So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?”: “Mmm hmm, I do,” Biden replied. While the president said “you’ll see” that Putin is “going to pay,” he did not elaborate.

Whether Major Biden will be back at the White House: “The answer’s yes. Look, Major was a rescue pup. Major did not bite someone and penetrate the skin. What happens is for– th– I guess what surprised me is the White House itself, living there. Every door you turn to, there’s a guy there in a black jacket…. You turn a corner, and there’s two people you don’t know at all. And he moves to protect. But he’s a sweet dog. Eighty-five percent of the people there love him. He just– all he does is lick them and wag his tail.” Biden said “the dog’s being trained now” in Delaware and that he planned to see him later that night when he stayed in Delaware. “He was going home. I didn’t banish him to home. Jill was gonna be away for four days. I was gonna be away for two so we took him home.”

[From ABC News]

JUSTICE 4 MAJOR. He’s a good dog who was just looking out for Handsome Joe!! He got startled by a Secret Service agent and he said PROTEC. Anyway, the Major Biden update, while welcome, was not the part of the interview which got the most attention. It was Biden calling Vladimir Putin a killer, something that Jen Psaki did not walk back in the press room. So someone asked Putin about it and said: “I remember in my childhood, when we argued in the courtyard, we used to say: it takes one to know one. That’s not … just a children’s saying or joke. We always see our own traits in other people and think they are like how we really are.” He also wished Biden “good health,” which absolutely means that Putin has already sent people to poison Biden with Polonium.

Vladimir Putin has responded to US President Joe Biden’s accusation that he is a “killer” – by saying “it takes one to know one”.

The Russian president said he wishes Biden “good health”.

More videos here: https://t.co/9In6Tp1s5a pic.twitter.com/r1QwEAzb6L

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 18, 2021

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, Avalon Red, Backgrid.

I couldn’t click on this Variety story fast enough: “British Media Caught by Surprise as U.S. Outlets Continue to Break Meghan and Harry News.” Hehehehehe. As an American covering the royal beat, I have to say, the Duchess of Sussex’s entire journey on Salty White Folk Isle was really eye-opening for me. Before Meghan, I never really understood the deep well of anti-Americanism in the British press, aristocracy and establishment. I never understood how the British media and establishment is decades behind the US in understanding and identifying racism and bigotry and institutional white privilege. I never understood that the British media feels like their royal family is “theirs” to abuse and torment. The British media has been irritated this entire time that Meghan specifically has allies in the American media because of all of that, because they can’t control her and “own” her. So let’s check out what Variety has to say.

In one week, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s nuclear CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey became a global television event that toppled incendiary presenter Piers Morgan from “Good Morning Britain” and now leaves a sizeable question mark over Sharon Osbourne’s future as a co-host at “The Talk.” But it’s the war of words being played out across the Atlantic that has prompted extensive pearl-clutching from British royal watchers puzzled by U.S. outlets controlling the narrative about the British royal family.

In the latest jaw-dropping development, Gayle King, a co-host on “CBS This Morning” and Winfrey’s BFF, revealed on March 16 that Prince Harry has been in touch with his father, Prince Charles, and brother, Prince William. “The word I was given was that those conversations were not productive,” King declared live on TV. “No one in the royal family has talked to Meghan yet.”

To see a major update on private family conversations revealed by an American broadcaster rather than the British press is unprecedented, says royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams. “If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have believed it,” a flabbergasted Fitzwilliams tells Variety. “This is one of the royal family’s worst nightmares.”

Katie Nicholl, royal editor for Vanity Fair and the author of “Harry and Meghan: Life, Loss and Love,” says she was “really shocked” to see the couple “using Gayle King as their mouthpiece, not least because we heard so much from them previously that we didn’t expect there to be a running commentary from their friends in the media.”

Buckingham Palace is likely “very worried” but, notably, is in uncharted territory and “won’t know how to respond,” Fitzwilliams says. “It’s not possible to know how on earth you can have a conversation with Harry and then have Gayle King report it.”

Indeed, there’s a wariness among British media about Markle and Prince Harry’s revelations in their interview with Winfrey. U.K. outlets have focused efforts largely on debunking points made by the couple regarding their son Archie’s eligibility for a title, rather than interrogating racism within the royal family or a lack of mental health support for Markle.

Nicholl argues that the couple has received their share of “sympathy” from the public — particularly among younger generations — but that British media are less willing “to just accept everything the couple have said because they’re probably more aware than any other section of the media that there are two sides to this story. We’ve heard Meghan and Harry’s side, but there is another side as well,” says Nicholl.

Asked whether British press are rankled by royal news originating from the U.S., the commentator insists it “doesn’t make a difference.”

“Whether it was the U.S. or any other outlet, they’re continuing to feed the narrative. It’s got the world talking and selling newspapers, so from a journalist’s perspective, why would you want to cut that off?” says the commentator.

“But from the other perspective, here is a family trying to heal a very serious rift,” notes Nicholl. “It does seem a very unusual strategy [by Harry and Meghan].”

Chris Ship, royal correspondent for broadcaster ITV, which aired the program in the U.K., tells Variety that the impact at home is “slightly bigger” than even Princess Diana’s landmark interview with the BBC’s “Panorama” program in 1995. “What Harry and Meghan have done has really damaged the royal family’s reputation in the U.S.,” Ship says. “You have to think: How long does that international reputation for the royal family last?”

[From Variety]

Super-shady (and accurate) by Variety: “U.K. outlets have focused efforts largely on debunking points made by the couple regarding their son Archie’s eligibility for a title, rather than interrogating racism within the royal family or a lack of mental health support for Markle.” The British press is trying to whine and nitpick this or that detail of Meghan and Harry’s interview instead of, you know, actually examining whether the broad strokes are right, whether there was a vile, racist hate campaign against Meghan which everyone in the British media was actively participating in, largely at the behest of the Windsors. That’s what’s bothering the British media more than anything else – that their actions and their history of misogyny and racism are suddenly under the microscope too. They’re also worried that their arrangements with the Windsors are about to be massively exposed.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.