What will Ghislaine Maxwell’s newly unsealed deposition reveal about Prince Andrew? Is the Palace gulping hard? [LaineyGossip]
A kitten and a corgi! OMG. [Dlisted]
Miranda Lambert clearly views her husband as a piece of meat. [Just Jared]
60 Minutes released an absolutely crazy clip of Lesley Stahl’s interview with Donald Trump. She tried to call him out on the lies. [Towleroad]
Another analysis of the Chris Pratt debate. [Pajiba]
America invented the White Girl Who Loves Autumn? [Jezebel]
Tori Spelling might join RHOBH? [Starcasm]
Quibi is over. Six months later. [Seriously OMG]
Thoughts on this Alexander McQueen cardigan dress? [Tom & Lorenzo]
Photos from the 2006 Marie Antoinette premiere. [GFY]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Kelly Marie Tran deserves way better than she got from her Star Wars experience. But what is done is done, and it’s onward and upward for Tran, who is the latest Disney heroine in Raya and the Last Dragon. The teaser dropped yesterday, showing off Tran’s c…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Kelly Marie Tran deserves way better than she got from her Star Wars experience. But what is done is done, and it’s onward and upward for Tran, who is the latest Disney heroine in Raya and the Last Dragon. The teaser dropped yesterday, showing off Tran’s c…

While then-Meghan Markle invited her Suits costars to her 2018 wedding, I never got the impression that she was super-tight/BFFs with any of them. That’s not a slam or anything, I just got the impression that she was well-liked and respected for her professionalism among her coworkers, but she was much closer to people outside of work. But you can’t just say “yeah, I worked with Meghan for years and years but it’s not like we were best friends.” That’s not a sexy interview hook! So it is with Patrick J. Adams, the star of Suits who played many scenes against Meghan. Whenever Adams is interviewed these days, he’s asked about Meghan. He never disses her, and he comes up with creative ways to say that they were just work friends and not much more.

Patrick J. Adams says “pure fear” is preventing him from calling his former Suits costar Meghan Markle. The actor played the Duchess of Sussex’s love interest on the USA drama, but after attending her royal wedding to Prince Harry in May 2018, he’s had little contact with Meghan.

“Quite frankly, I think I’m intimidated,” he told the Radio Times. “I have no doubt I could pick up the phone and call her at any moment, but I don’t know what I would say.”

Adams said that after Meghan and Harry’s 1-year-old son Archie was born and he welcomed a daughter with Troian Bellisario, the former costars were in touch. “After our children were born, there were some texts sent and gifts sent, but I guess I’m a little scared,” he explained. “I think it’s pure fear. I guess I’m scared about the idea of breaking through whatever walls exist to have that conversation.”

Adams added that it’s difficult to see the media scrutiny Meghan has been under since leaving Suits and marrying Prince Harry. “Knowing what’s in Meghan’s heart and knowing how compassionate she can be, it’s hard to watch because you want your friends to be left alone to build their life together,” he said.

Adams, 39, also recently spoke about his relationship with Meghan, also 39, with Access Hollywood, saying that he was “happy to have her stateside” after she relocated with her family to California earlier this year. The actor also applauded his former costar’s recent work in encouraging Americans to vote in the 2020 presidential election.

“I’m very, very happy that she’s becoming very vocal and doing whatever she can to help the election in November,” he said. “I miss my friend, but I’m very happy she’s doing well.”

[From People]

I think about this a lot, especially in the context of Meghan’s friendship with Jessica Mulroney. Patrick, Jessica, all of them knew Meghan before she was a duchess. They knew her when she was an actress on a cable show with dreams and goals beyond Suits, for sure, but did any of them ever think that the Meghan they knew for years would end up as the Duchess of Sussex, the American princess who rescued a blood prince and got him to move to sunny California? The story of Meghan’s life is so improbable, and it’s funny that the people who were once in Meghan’s life are still making adjustments. What DO you say to your former coworker after the craziness of her life the past three years?

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty.

One of my favorite niche storylines of the 2020 presidential campaign is “how did the Trump campaign blow through $800 million before September?” I’m not saying that I’m a huge nerd who is fascinated by campaign finance (I am not), but I could easily read dozens of stories about Where The Money Went and Why. Now, in the final days of the campaign, it looks like the worst is happening for the Trump campaign: they don’t have the money to make their final push in advertising in swing states. Which has revived the conversations about where, how and why in the hell did they spend a billion dollars?

The Associated Press reports that despite having raised over $1 billion since 2017, the president’s reelection campaign has “set a lot of it on fire.” One of the biggest tells is that Joe Biden and his Democratic allies are expected to outspend Trump and the GOP by more than 2-to-1 on ads in the final days of the campaign, reportedly because Trump just doesn’t have the cash. Per the AP: “On Monday, the firm Medium Buying reported Trump was canceling ads in Wisconsin; Minnesota, which Trump had hoped to flip; and Ohio, which went for Trump in 2016 but now appears to be a tight contest….”

Trump is now in a position that’s virtually unthinkable for an incumbent president, said Travis Ridout, codirector of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks advertising spending. “Advertising obviously isn’t everything. But we do think ads matter for a couple percentage points in a presidential race. And it’s just not a good sign for the Trump campaign,” Ridout said.

Where the campaign has dropped major money on advertising, it might as well have put the cash through an industrial shredder for all the impact it made. In January, Trump spent $10 million on a Super Bowl ad when he didn’t even have a Democratic challenger, in a pointless pissing contest with Mike Bloomberg. Last fall, he dropped $250,000 on an ad that ran during Game 7 of the World Series, after the booing against him reached “almost 100 decibels” during Game 5. The campaign also sunk $1.6 million on TV ads in the Washington, D.C., media market—where he received a humiliating 4% of the vote in 2016 and has no chance of winning in 2020—so Trump could gaze adoringly at himself during Fox News commercial breaks.

Additionally, Parscale reportedly purchased “a fleet of luxury vehicles“; surrogates were flown on private jets; and it wouldn’t be a Trump operation if the candidate wasn’t charging his own campaign to stay at his properties to the tune of more than $7.4 million since 2017. “They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads,” Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant, told the AP. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”

[From VF]

Mike Murphy made me laugh! He’s a Never Trumper Republican and that was a great quote. VF also details some of the other ways the Trump campaign blew through millions of dollars: “legal fees ($38.7 million), merchandise ($35.2 million), and relocating the Republican National Convention after a fight with North Carolina’s governor over coronavirus safety measures.” They also had to spend $100K to buy copies of Don Jr’s sad book. And even then… “$310 million can’t be accounted for because it went through limited liability firms, which is precisely the amount of sketchy one should expect from Team Trump.” 310 MILLION DOLLARS. Cannot be accounted for!!! That’s almost a third of all of the money the campaign raised over three years!! Jesus Christ.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

GLOW’s sudden cancellation due to COVID-19 means we won’t get to see the natural conclusion of the show, but now we are learning what else the cancellation is costing us. It turns out that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the early summer, a cadre of actresses from the show, all wom…

GLOW’s sudden cancellation due to COVID-19 means we won’t get to see the natural conclusion of the show, but now we are learning what else the cancellation is costing us. It turns out that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the early summer, a cadre of actresses from the show, all wom…

Ingrid Seward must be so mad that Robert Lacey’s book hijacked all of the royal-gossip conversations for the past three weeks or so. Seward was all set up to spread her anti-Sussex message far and wide in support of her new book, Prince Philip Revealed, which we’ve already discussed previously. This is the same book where Seward insists, in gruesome detail, that Philip did NOT cheat on the Queen with hundreds of women over the years. It’s also the same book where Seward uses Philip as a prop to project every stupid anti-Sussex rumor from the courtiers and the press. Philip is almost 100 years old – I feel strongly that he really doesn’t give a f–k about most of this. But here we go – Ingrid Seward spoke to Katie Nicholl at Vanity Fair, so there’s new sh-t to discuss.

Philip harbored doubts about Meghan: While he was initially fond of Meghan and made a huge effort to be at the couple’s Windsor wedding despite having undergone a hip operation weeks before, the Duke “harbored doubts” about Harry’s wife. Seward’s book, the first major biography of Philip in over 30 years, reveals that he now compares Meghan to Wallis Simpson, who triggered the abdication crisis when she married the then-King Edward VIII in 1937. “For Philip, whose entire existence has been based on a devotion to doing his duty, it appeared that his grandson had abdicated his for the sake of his marriage to an American divorcee in much the same way as Edward VIII gave up his crown to marry Wallis Simpson in 1936,” Seward writes.

Philip & Harry’s relationship has suffered: “Philip simply cannot understand how Harry has behaved the way he has done. His grandson’s behavior is completely alien to him so not unnaturally the relationship has suffered. Don’t forget this is a man about to turn 100 who has devoted 68 years of his adult life to supporting the monarchy, and this has been a great shock. The Queen would not want him to worry at his age, but Philip’s absence from the Sandringham Summit spoke volumes. The fact that he was driven away from the big house at Sandringham before everyone even arrived signaled he didn’t want to be part of it.”

Harry & Meghan ignored Philip’s advice: “Philip’s way is that he says his bit, and then steps back from the situation because he doesn’t like to interfere. It was up to Harry and Meghan to listen but they didn’t and Philip has always been very protective of the Queen so if anyone upsets her, they upset him too. His mantra is the monarchy comes first, second, and third. He cuttingly reminded the late Diana, Princess of Wales that being a member of the royal family was not a popularity contest but involved everyone working together for the good of the institution of the monarchy. Philip welcomed Meghan at the beginning, he knows what it’s like to be an outsider, and so he’s always very supportive of people marrying into the family. He quite liked Meghan at first, but their actions have left a bad taste and as a consequence the relationship with Harry has suffered.”

An apocryphal story about hunting: Harry, who was dating Meghan at the time, was the guest of honor at a shooting weekend in 2018, but pulled out at the last minute because Meghan didn’t want him to slaughter game birds. “At exactly 9 a.m. all the guns were waiting at the door to move off, but no sign of Harry. They didn’t quite know what to do so they waited and waited until Harry eventually appeared at the door in his dressing gown looking very sheepish. His embarrassed explanation was that Meghan did not want him to go out with the guns, which was extremely awkward as he was guest of honor.” The story was relayed to Seward by a source close to the prince. “This is exactly the sort of behavior that led to Harry becoming more estranged from his oldest friends. This wasn’t the Harry they knew; he would never have let them down. Harry knows how expensive it is and how much time goes into organizing a shoot. It was very rude and the general feeling was one of disbelief, because it was so out of character.”

[From Vanity Fair]

The hunting story, to me, reads like the British media’s unhinged insistence that Meghan is vegan (she is not) and that she’s some kind of dreadful anti-hunter who bullied Harry into abandoning his favorite bloodsport pastime. There is literally no evidence of this beyond some bitchy courtiers’ idle gossip, and it’s been well established that they make sh-t up all the time. Even before Harry met Meghan, he was barely hunting anymore, and I just don’t think Meghan is the kind of person who “demands” that her boyfriend give up something like that. Isn’t it far more likely that Harry didn’t want to hunt and he would have preferred to spend that weekend with Meghan?

As for Seward’s larger projections onto Prince Philip… I would imagine that Philip disliked Meghan straight away simply because Philip is deeply racist and colonialist. I suspect his “advice,” if he offered any, was not made in good faith or it was simply of the “be a meek Victorian woman without opinions” variety. The fact that two people in their 90s (Liz and Phil) are trying to dictate the behavior of their adult grandchildren is deeply unhealthy.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red, Backgrid.

So much has happened in the past couple of weeks that it’s hard to remember how Trump utterly smeared and deeply offended people who lost loved ones to covid. He was so tone deaf, so arrogant in his statements after being diagnosed and treated that it was staggering, even for him. He tweeted “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Amanda Kloots is the widow of Broadway star Nick Cordero, who passed away at just 41 this July after an over three month battle with the virus. Amanda spoke out about how awful it was of Trump to tell people not to be afraid of a virus that had taken her husband’s life and over 210,000 lives at that point (222k now). She said it was “a gut punch” and “such an insult” and brought it all back. She also talked about how the virus “dominated” small businesses and workers who lost jobs and livelihoods and said Trump owed America an apology.

Amanda and her baby, 16-month-old Elvis, are covering the new issue of People Magazine. Amanda told People the ways she shows Elvis who his dad is, by showing him photos and singing his songs. It was sweet and sad and just reminds people that there families who have lost so much.

It’s been three months since Broadway star Nick Cordero died from complications of COVID-19 at 41 years of age, and his wife Amanda Kloots is opening up about the ways in which she honors her late husband every day.

Kloots, 38, and her 16-month-old son, Elvis, often start their mornings by playing some of Cordero’s music and every night, before bed, they look at photos of him.

“We say goodnight to Dad and give Nick a kiss,” Kloots tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, on stands Friday.

Kloots says even in her darkest times, it’s her son who always cheers her up.

“Anytime I’m sad, he brightens my mood in two seconds,” she says. “He looks at me with his big smile and his little teeth, and I’m instantly transported into a different mood.”

The fitness instructor and founder of AK! Fitness says she already sees the similarities between her husband and her son. “Elvis is just calm and cool. He gets along with everybody. I think that’s very much Nick,” she says.

Her home is filled with mementos of Cordero — a rug in the living room has the title of Cordero’s song “Live Your Life” on it; a painting of the family, made by one of Kloots’s Instagram followers, hangs on the wall, and a pillow on the couch is covered in printed photos of him.

Kloots says she feels Cordero’s positive energy watching over them.

“We have this beautiful little boy that we created together,” says Kloots. “I love watching him grow, and I know Nick is watching him too.”

[From People]

People has a video with Amanda where she gushes about Elvis and it’s sweet. They likely put Amanda on the cover right ahead of the election because she’s been so open about her husband’s illness and tragic death. Look at that headline “Widowed by Covid-19.” I bet the fact that she spoke out against Trump made their editors pick her. (Amanda does have a memoir coming out, but not until next year.) So many people think covid is no big deal because they haven’t been affected by it. For those who haven’t yet learned the hard way, maybe Amanda’s story will help bring it home. I’m really interested to see who People picks for next week’s cover.

As an aside I’ve actually worked out with Amanda and didn’t realize it until now! She has a dance fitness segment with PopSugar that I’ve done. It was tough but fun. Her choreography was just the right level of challenging too. She has on demand and live workouts available through her website for only $9.99 a month.

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#nationalsonday – Elvis this mama couldn’t love you more! Thank you for bringing me joy and smiles everyday! ??

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Shonda Rhimes’s new cover story in The Hollywood Reporter is so much Show Your Work and I’ve already pitched it to Duana for our next podcast episode because we could spend the whole time talking about what Shonda gives us here. But the detail in the piece that’s getting the most coverage is what sh…