The entire British and international press have been begging Kensington Palace to put the Princess of Wales in front of a camera and simply have her thank everyone for their support and provide some kind of explanation for what’s going on with her. Finally, today, they did just that. No more games, no more manipulated photos, no more weird TMZ sightings. The Princess of Wales now says that she underwent major abdominal surgery and after the surgery, the doctors found the presence of cancer. She is now being treated for cancer. Here’s the video:

Our thoughts and prayers go out to her. If you recall, in January, Kensington Palace released a formal announcement about Kate’s abdominal surgery. Nowhere in that statement did the word “cancer” appear, although within the same newscycle as the statement, palace sources were telling reporters from every major news outlet that Kate did not or does not have cancer. You can say… well, her focus was on her recovery and, as she says in this video, figuring out what to tell her children. I understand that, and I have sympathy for it, but it’s just another example of Kensington Palace burning through their credibility and goodwill.

This video also means, I’m sure, that all of the talk about Kate turning up to church on Windsor on Easter Sunday is gone as well. This is effectively an extension – as it should be! – on her recuperation time.

Screencaps courtesy of Kensington Palace’s video.

Lenny Kravitz on Channing Tatum, who is engaged to Zoe Kravitz: “He’s a great guy. We got on really well. We hang out, and we talk. He’s a very soulful human being. He was raised well. He has manners and class.” [Buzzfeed]
Gisele Bundchen looks a bit freshened up to me. [Socialite Life]
Celine Dion announced the starting lineup at the Bruins game. [LaineyGossip]
People are obsessed with the X-Men ‘97 trailer. [OMG Blog]
Ben Affleck is filming The Accountant 2. [Just Jared]
Things are moving in the right direction for President Biden. [Pajiba]
Sydney Sweeney stepped out in black lace. [Go Fug Yourself]
It’s nice to see Fan Bingbing out and about. [RCFA]
Would Lisa Rinna do RHOBH again? [Seriously OMG]
This 90 Day Fiance woman looks like Selena Gomez. [Starcasm]
Megan Fox confirms that she & Machine Gun Kelly did break off their engagement for a time, but it kind of feels like they never put the engagement back on? [Hollywood Life]

In 2021, News Corp bought TMZ. TMZ was already flirting with right-wing politics and making misogyny a glossy, tabloid adventure, and the News Corp purchase just solidified it. TMZ was also flirting with royal coverage long before they were bought by the Murdochs, but this year, TMZ has really stepped up their royal gossip. It’s probably because all of the Murdoch-owned outlets work with some kind of tabloid synergy – The Sun and TMZ held the exclusives on the video of Prince William and Kate at the Windsor Farm Store last weekend, and TMZ initially doubled-down on the British reporting. Then they remembered their roots, and suddenly skeptical American TMZ editors were talking about maybe that wasn’t really Kate in the video and maybe the doubters had a point.

All of which means that TMZ quickly threw together a “special” called TMZ Investigates: Where Is Kate Middleton? It aired on Fox last night, and they managed to do an exclusive interview with Piers Morgan. Guess what? Piers has some doubts about all of the palace manipulations, especially with the Mother’s Day photo (not the farmer’s market video though?).

Kate Middleton couldn’t have taken her infamous Mother’s Day photo the week before it was posted, because unlike the photoshopped image projects … IRL she looked much more sickly at that time … at least, according to Piers Morgan.

We sat down with the famed British host and journalist for our new Kate Middleton documentary — airing Thursday night on FOX — and he revealed some intel on the princess’ appearance during the first week of March … the time when Kate and the palace claim that Mother’s Day pic was snapped.

According to Morgan, a source who saw Kate at that time told him she looked a whole lot thinner than usual, and nowhere near the glowing picture of health shown in the now infamous photo. Morgan did acknowledge Kate’s a thin woman under normal circumstances … but the person who saw her said it was beyond her average skinny appearance.

[From TMZ]

Yeah, I think we’ve pretty much established that the Mother’s Day frankenphoto was cobbled together from likely several older photos. Piers’ statement that he knows someone who saw Kate and she was a lot thinner than usual… that actually says a lot about the authenticity of the farmer’s market video too, because the “Kate” in that video was regular Kate-sized, except with longer legs and a different gait and a much younger-looking face.

Watch @PiersMorgan break down why the viral Mother’s Day photo of #KateMiddleton and her children could NOT have been taken the week before it was posted. Join Piers & other experts on ‘TMZ Investigates: Where Is Kate Middleton?’ TONIGHT at 9/8c on @foxtv https://t.co/D9FYKBZqoy pic.twitter.com/IL4JowVx4N

— TMZ (@TMZ) March 21, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.

Queen Camilla went to Isle of Man on Wednesday, and then she flew to Belfast and had events throughout Thursday. Did you know that the Windsors are still extremely careful about how they visit Northern Ireland? They rarely announce their visits in advance and they rarely spend the night, although Camilla reportedly did spend Wednesday night in Belfast ahead of her day of engagements. I was sort of surprised to see that some of Camilla’s engagements were so informal too – some of them were just popping into smaller bakeries and delis in Belfast and checking out the local delicacies. She apparently left Belfast with several grocery bags full of food. Which is sort of nice. She also chatted about how King Charles is doing:

Queen Camilla offered a new comment on how King Charles is doing while receiving cancer treatment during her solo trip to Northern Ireland. On Thursday, the Queen, 76, stepped out in Belfast to check out some of the city’s artisan and family-run food shops, where she briefly spoke about her husband’s health at the Arcadia Delicatessen.

“He’s doing very well. He was very disappointed he couldn’t come,” Queen Camilla said after shop assistant Brenda Robb gave her a get-well card for the King, 75, and shared well-wishes, Hello! magazine reported. According to the outlet, the royal had something playful to say when someone cracked a joke about men “not being the best patients.”

“I try to keep him in order,” Queen Camilla replied about her husband of 18 years.

The Queen spoke about King Charles again during a stop at the family-run Coffey’s Butcher, which has been in business since 1929, when she accepted a gift of the store’s specialties including vegetable rolls, beef sausages and Belfast pickle.

“I shall take these back to my husband. He will really make the most of them,” Queen Camilla said of the treats, Hello! Reported.

The Queen also popped into Knotts Bakery, where she made no promises that the fruit loaf and iced madeira they gave her would make it home for the King to sample. “She said she’d eat some of them on the way home,” family bakery co-owner William Corrie the outlet.

[From People]

Honestly, this is a good way to keep people updated on Charles’s health – not everything needs a press release or formal palace statement. It can just be Camilla, answering questions informally during her events. It begs the question: why couldn’t Prince William do the same for Kate? Also, it helps that Charles has been doing events too and that he’s been photographed clearly and repeatedly since his cancer diagnosis. While Cam was in Belfast, Charles was greeting some diplomats at Buckingham Palace too.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

It’s just too funny, to think back on how many “royal experts” insisted that Meghan Markle was just some wannabe starlet on a cable soap opera. They desperately tried to make Meghan sound unsuccessful, broke, trashy, and like she should be grateful for whatever crumbs the Windsors gave her. Let’s be clear – in Hollywood, nearly every actress wants to get a TV show, especially a well-written show with a sexy/fun character. Meghan loved working on Suits and now, years later, the show has become a massive hit on streaming. Suits was the biggest television success story last year because of the absolutely bonkers streaming numbers. It was so big that now a new Suits show is being developed (without Meghan or most of the original cast). So, here’s a hilarious addendum to Suits’ long-running success: the BBC has purchased the entire nine-season run to air on broadcast television and on their iPlayer streaming.

Suits is continuing to cash in on its current popularity. The BBC has acquired all nine seasons of the hit American legal drama, along with mockumentary St. Denis Medical and the series continuation of the hit Best Man films, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, for its TV channels and the BBC iPlayer streaming service.

It acquired the three titles from NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution.

Set in a New York City law firm, Suits stars Patrick J. Adams (Old School) as Mike Ross, who uses his photographic memory to talk his way into a job as an associate working for successful “closer” Harvey Spector, played by Gabriel Macht (Love & Other Drugs), despite being a college dropout who never attended law school. Together they win lawsuits and close cases, while at the same time hiding Mike’s secret. Suits boasts a stellar ensemble cast that also includes Gina Torres (Westworld), Sarah Rafferty (Brothers & Sisters), Rick Hoffman (Billions), Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy) and Meghan Markle (Remember Me).

“This is a really exciting and enjoyable trio of star-studded series: the hotly anticipated comedy, St. Denis Medical, the sassy, romantic comedy-drama, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, and the smart and stylish legal drama, Suits,” said Sue Deeks, head of BBC program acquisition. “We couldn’t be more delighted to bring them all to BBC viewers.”

[From THR]

So, there you go. The BBC saw the popularity of Suits on streaming last year and they wanted a piece of it too. The BBC! The same organization which gently carries water for the Windsors at every turn, that same BBC is like “wow, Meghan Markle’s TV show was actually really great and people should see it!” Plus, those Brits just like to pretend that they still “own” her.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, NBC/Suits.

The royalist media has some understanding that the Princess of Wales’s Mother’s Day frankenphoto fiasco cannot be buried or ignored. They tried that and it came back and bit them on the ass. So they’ve been trying other methods of deflection and minimization – first it was “everyone edits photos,” then it was “Kate just wanted her kids to look cute.” Then it was “but Prince Harry and Meghan manipulate their photos too,” only that was such an egregious lie, every outlet has now backtracked on their claims. Throughout it all, I haven’t even gotten the sense that William and Kate understand how badly they f–ked up and how their haphazard propaganda means that the monarchy’s credibility has taken a huge hit. Speaking of, Camilla Tominey wrote another piece about the fiasco after her first effort landed with a dull thump. “Picture agencies, paparazzi and the Palace: The battle to control the truth” is partly a history lesson of how “the Windsors have always taken their own photos,” but there are several interesting quotes critical of poor, “demonized” Kate and William. And because it’s Tominey, there’s a lot of whataboutism with the Sussexes too. Some highlights:

The Mother’s Day photo: Yet the decision by picture agencies to issue a “kill notice” withdrawing the Mothering Sunday photograph, which was taken by Prince William but edited by his wife, lays bare a tension that has been building in recent years over the extent to which the royals have exercised that control. It’s not just a problem that members of the Royal family are sidelining professional photographers, and consequently the picture agencies that distribute their work, such as Getty Images, Reuters and Agence France-Press. It is also the amateur nature of the editing – and its implications for a media trying to be as accountable as possible to the public.

Photo agencies can’t trust the Windsors: As Martin Keene, a former group picture editor at the Press Association, points out: “All picture agencies have truth and accuracy [in] their DNA – it’s something that really matters to them. The only thing that they have is their trust and their credibility and they need to know that, for their clients and the people who look at their pictures – the readers, the viewers – that their picture really was what the photographer saw when the picture was taken, and that it hasn’t been manipulated since that time.”

Control freak royals: One former royal photographer explained: “A lot of this has stemmed from William and Harry being control freaks when it comes to pictures of their own children. They grew up hating the paparazzi for chasing Princess Diana around and have had a tendency to tar all royal photographers with the same brush. So, with the odd exception, we no longer see royal photographers – the ones who cover the day-to-day official engagements and all the overseas tours – being invited in to take more candid family photographs. Instead, the royals either photograph their children themselves or choose their own pet photographer to take more intimate shots. And that can sometimes lead to problems.”

An agency insider criticized Kate: While photographic agencies do allow photographers to make minor adjustments to images (such as cropping), photographs which have been digitally manipulated must carry an editor’s note before being sent out. According to one agency insider: “It’s nice that the Princess has been shooting her own stuff but she appears to have no understanding of the gravity of what she’s done by changing the image before putting it out for circulation.”

Archie’s christening photo: The picture agencies are now investigating two other photographs, including Prince Archie’s official christening picture, taken by fashion photographer Chris Allerton in 2019. Getty said the portrait – showing the two-month-old with Meghan, Prince Harry, King Charles, Camilla, William, Kate, Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland and Princess Diana’s sisters – had been “digitally enhanced”, a claim Allerton has described as “a load of cobblers”. It came after an editor’s note was placed on an image of the late Queen with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren which was snapped by Catherine in August 2022 at Balmoral. As the controversy around Allerton’s photograph shows, however, even using professional photographers can present a challenge for the royals – especially if they are perceived to be “in the pay” of the principals. Royals have traditionally always had their “favourites”. For Diana, it was Tim Graham. For Camilla, it is Hugo Burnand, who took the official Coronation photographs.

Using a favored professional photographer: As one picture editor explained: “The trouble with this approach is the images produced are designed to cast the subject in as favourable light as possible. Therefore the images aren’t a true representation. It’s not the same as having a photojournalist take the pictures from a position of complete impartiality.” Invariably such photographs end up being “edited” by a spin doctor, rather than a professional picture editor, which can again lead to problems. “These people aren’t trained to spot inconsistencies and potential manipulations,” added the picture editor.

Michael Middleton just got tossed under the bus too: “The truth is that the royals have got form when it comes to manipulating their own pictures. I remember being quite suspicious of some images taken by Kate’s father, Michael Middleton. There was obvious blurring and movement and darkening. Elements of it have been going on for years.”

[From The Telegraph]

Again, the controversy over Archie’s christening photos was a complete lie and Allerton spoke out in his own defense and Getty backtracked and removed the note. Tominey is just tossing Allerton and the Sussexes in the conversation as yet another deflection from how badly the Waleses f–ked up. That being said, Tominey at least acknowledges the f–kup. The thing is, the conversation about “it’s bad to have a favored professional photographer” is kind of weird given the fact that we’ve gotten some very prominent examples of photographers coming out to defend their integrity within this same newscycle. They tried to say Misan Harriman manipulated his portrait of the Sussexes, and Misan clapped back HARD. Same with Allerton. If anything, this shows why the palace should always use professional photographers who are willing to defend themselves and their work. Also: that mention of Michael Middleton is a warning shot, huh?

Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace & Sussex Royal IG.

As you probably know, when it comes to medical research, women are under-represented. The most famous example was the lack of female crash test dummies, but studies on issues like heart disease and cancer have also mainly focused on male participants. Enter Lululemon. The popular yet pricey athleisure line funded a study to research breathing patterns in “elite” female runners. The tests were conducted on treadmills, with the participants doing different treadmill workouts while wearing custom sports bras that were adjusted to different levels of tightness around their rib cages. Surprise! The study found that wearing a sports bra that’s too tight around your rib cage may “compromise” a woman’s ability to breathe properly while exercising, which can also affect their running performance. Lululemon really dropped all that money to tell us something every single woman who’s ever worn a sports bra while exercising could have told them for free.

Be cautious: It turns out that wearing a tight sports bra while exercising may not be good for your health, according to a new study. The study, which was published in the National Library of Medicine, was funded by Lululemon Athletica and conducted by the University of British Columbia. During their research, they examined the breathing patterns of nine elite runners.

While on a treadmill, runners wore custom sports bras that could be adjusted to different tightness levels. The bras were designed for individuals with rib cage sizes ranging from 30 to 34 and cup sizes of B or C. Throughout the study, the runners engaged in various treadmill workouts, during which they adjusted the tightness of their sports bras differently for each session.

The study — which focused on the tightness only around the rib cage — revealed that women who wore a sports bra that was too tight took fewer breaths and exhibited a higher breaths-per-minute rate, noting that “respiratory function may become compromised by the pressure exerted by the underband.”

However, those who wore a less constrictive sports bra “resulted in a decreased work of breathing,” and improved one’s running economy by decreasing submaximal oxygen uptake.

“People ask, ‘What sports bra should I wear?’ I say, ‘Wear one that is correctly fitted,’” Shalaya Kipp, the lead author of the study who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, told the Washington Post. “That’s probably the biggest thing that would help.”

Specifically, the study showed how wearing a looser bra had a 1.3% improvement rate for a person’s running economy. Kipp told the outlet that a 2% increase in running economy would help a three-hour marathon runner improve their time by three minutes.

“It was quite invasive,” Kipp, who also competed in the 2012 Olympics and participated in the study, said. “It’s the hardest experimental protocol I’ve ever had someone do.”

“A decline in lung function makes breathing harder, which is especially critical during exercise or daily physical activity,” she added, per the outlet.

[From People]

I think most of these results are common sense. Of course wearing a too-tight sports bra is going to make it more difficult to breathe while running. Wearing anything too tight from your hips through your shoulders is going to make it difficult to breathe! I think the problem most women run into when buying a sports bra is wanting to feel that extra support to avoid bouncy boobs. Running when you’re flopping around is equally as painful and annoying. So, just like with everything else made for women, the struggle is real. Also, I wonder if Lululemon sponsored this “study” as a way to promote whatever wildly overpriced custom sports bras they want to sell to women with cup sizes C or less. Be the heroes, Lululemon! Give us a supportive yet comfortable sports bra for under $50!

On a more serious note, I do want to take a minute to do a quick PSA on the topic of too-tight sports bras. Obviously, this will not be the case for most women, but if your sports bra suddenly feels too tight without reason, please consider getting checked out by your doctor. My friend is a marathon runner. She had a routine mammogram last winter and it was clear. This past fall, while training, she noticed her sports bra felt too tight and that she was having trouble breathing. It kept happening, so her doctor sent her for another mammogram and she ended up being diagnosed with Stage IV triple negative breast cancer. I don’t want to be a downer or scare anyone! But, it’s been weighing on me, so I thought it was important to mention it just in case it could help any of you out there.

Photos credit: Andrea Piacquadio, Andres Ayrton, The Lazy Artist Gallery and Monstera Production on Pexels

No sooner did we finish covering Michael Keaton praising Jenna Ortega for fitting right in with the Beetlejuice vibe, than Warner Bros. released two new production photos for us to pore over! And no sooner did I finish writing about those photos than the studio dropped the first trailer! Marketing, Marketing, Marketing! The new glimpses are only snippets, but so far they’re hitting all the right notes. From the Deetz ladies + Justin Theroux standing graveside, to the boys’ choir-sounding cover of “Day-O” playing in the background, to the demon himself getting the last (and only) line in the trailer. Here’s a handbook for the recently released:

The juice is loose: The trailer is set to a special rendition of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” as the cast is seen at a graveyard. Jenna Ortega is seen uncovering the model of Winter River, before the black-and-white-striped-suit wearing villain makes his appearance. “The juice is loose,” he says, as Winona Ryder’s Lydia is seen with a shocked look on her face.

Resurrection: The original 1988 movie revolved around dead couple Adam and Barbara Maitland (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, respectively) who enlist the help of the title character in order to help rid their home of the family that moves into their house, with disastrous results.

Cast of characters: Keaton will be joined by Ryder, who played Lydia Deetz in the original “Beetlejuice,” and “Wednesday” star Ortega will play her daughter. Justin Theroux will also appear in the movie, while Catherine O’Hara, who also starred in the original film, will reprise her role. … Willem Dafoe has also previously confirmed he will be in the movie. “I play a police officer in the afterlife, so I’m a dead person. And in life I was a B-movie action star, but I had an accident and that’s what sent me to the other side,” he told Variety in 2023.

What’s the story? Plot points have been kept under wraps, although director Tim Burton did peel back the curtain a little bit, saying the new movie gets underway with a death in the family. “That’s all I will say,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s something that happens that sets things in motion.” When asked if the person who dies is Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz (played in the original movie by Jeffrey Jones), Burton didn’t tip his hand. “We’ll see,” he said.

An emotional hook: Burton said Keaton reprising his role is “a weird out-of-body experience. It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it,” he added. Burton also said he and Keaton had tossed around the idea of a sequel for years. “Unless it felt right, he had no burning desire to do it,” he said. “I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook.”

[From Today]

Willem Dafoe?! As a deceased B-movie action star cum afterlife cop?!?! YES. Like I said, everything we’re seeing and hearing thus far is pitch perfect. Except, maybe, for Tim Burton acting as spokesperson. I guffawed so hard at Tim’s plot tease: “There’s something that happens that sets things in motion.” Thanks, Tim. You’ve just described every story since the development of dramatic structure. Actually, I kind of hope that’s what he pitched the studio with. And speaking of, Warner Bros. is the studio producing this so recite an incantation or two that David Zaslav doesn’t can it before release. Of course if he does, we know just which demon and police officer to summon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Entertainment Weekly (@entertainmentweekly)

Photos are screenshots from YouTube and via Instagram

Kate Winslet is currently promoting The Regime and Lee, a film which should come out later this year. The Regime is the HBO dark-comedy/satire of an oppressive European dictator, where Kate plays the dictator. It looks like yet another brilliant turn for Kate on the small screen, following her massively successful HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce and Mare of Easttown. For her promotion, Kate recently spoke to the New York Times Magazine about life, love and Ozempic. She’s not on Ozempic, and before she was asked about it in this interview, she had no idea what it was. Some highlights:

She had an eating disorder in the 1990s. “I never told anyone about it. Because guess what — people in the world around you go: ‘Hey, you look great! You lost weight!’” For that last bit, Winslet slipped into a pitch-perfect American accent — Los Angeles, maybe a film executive. “So even the compliment about looking good is connected to weight. And that is one thing I will not let people talk about. If they do, I pull them up straight away.”

On what she thinks of Ozempic: “I actually don’t know what Ozempic is. All I know is that it’s some pill that people are taking or something like that.” I told her that Ozempic — which apparently has not yet saturated English culture as it has in the United States — was a very in-demand diabetes drug now commonly taken off-label for weight loss. “But what is it?” Winslet said, her mouth full of pastry. I went on: It was a shot people took that dampened their interest in food. Winslet looked appalled… “Oh, my God. This sounds terrible. Let’s eat some more things!” She made a show of eating more of her pastry, crumbs tumbling onto the blankets.

On intimacy coordinators: “I would have benefited from an intimacy coordinator every single time I had to do a love scene or be partially naked or even a kissing scene. It would have been nice to have had someone in my corner, because I always had to stand up for myself.” And often, she didn’t — she felt that whatever was being asked of her was simply part of the job. She has a litany of unspoken objections she wished she had felt empowered to make: “I don’t like that camera angle. I don’t want to stand here full-frontal nude. I don’t want this many people in the room. I want my dressing gown to be closer. Just little things like that. When you’re young, you’re so afraid of pissing people off or coming across as rude or pathetic because you might need those things. So learning to have a voice for oneself in those environments was very, very hard.”

She never wanted to be known as a complainer: “I was already experiencing huge amounts of judgment, persecution, all this bullying. People can call me fat. They can call me what they want. But they certainly cannot say that I complained and I behaved badly. Over my dead body. I would not have known how to do that without people in power turning around and saying, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, you know, her again, that complainer.’ I would rather suffer in silence than ever let that happen to me, even still today.”

Accessing her emotions on screen: “In the beginning, I would rummage around my emotional toolbox and pull out something that had actually happened to me. But that stopped working for me at a certain point. I don’t know why. As you get older, you live more life; you have more real experiences that you add to the emotional toolbox without realizing that you’re doing it. And so sometimes, as you get older, quite honestly, emotions are easier to access because they just simmer below the surface all the time — because there’s just so damn many of them.”

[From The NY Times]

I’m not judging Kate’s reaction to the Ozempic stuff because I doubt she understands that Ozempic is supposed to be used for obesity and diabetes, not garden variety weight loss. Plus, it’s kind of clear that Kate still has a somewhat skewed relationship with how she talks about her body, food and weight. I don’t blame her for that either – the way she was treated when she was younger was traumatizing for her, and the things people said about her weight were cruel and toxic. All of it left a mark and, besides that, she’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Also, to all of the younger women out there: don’t be afraid to complain, to take up space, to point out when things are not right. There’s also a huge difference between “standing up for yourself and your needs” and “complaining.” “Suffering in silence” is not something to aspire to.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red.

Sharon Stone is going full steam ahead with her painting career because she’s not getting the acting roles she deserves. As she just told The Guardian about Hollywood, “I want to work with the masters because I have earned my place there.” Goals. So while the film industry slowly catches on to what they’re missing (if at all, let’s be honest), Sharon is exhibiting her vibrant artwork across the globe. She has a show right now in Berlin, and another one coming up in San Francisco. To promote her work, Sharon just chatted with Dana Carvey and David Spade on their Fly on the Wall podcast, and they discussed the time in April 1992 when Sharon hosted SNL and… a lot happened:

“I came out to do the monologue live, which is super scary, and a bunch of people started storming the stage saying they were going to kill me during the opening monologue,” Stone recalled. “The security that was in there froze because they never had seen anything like that happen.”

“Lorne started screaming at [security], ‘What are you doing? Watching the f–king show?’ And Lorne started beating them up and pulling them back from the stage,” she said. “The stage manager looked at me and said, ‘Hold for five.’ So all these people were getting beat up and handcuffed in front of me as we went live.”

“If you think the monologue is scary to begin with, try doing it as people are getting handcuffed in front of you,” Stone added.

She said the protesters were mad at her “because it was the beginning of my work as an AIDS activist. No one understood at the time what was happening and they didn’t know if amfAR could be trusted or if we were against gay people. Instead of waiting for an intelligent, informative conversation they thought, ‘Oh let’s just kill her.’”

“I was so not prepared,” Stone continued. “As you remember, the audience wasn’t up like it is now. Every time we were making a change you’re really physically changing your clothes while you’re running through the audience. I was just terrified. I honestly blacked out for half of the show.”

When the conversation pivoted to some of the sketches, Carvey noted that Stone “was such a good sport” and “the comedy we did with Sharon Stone, we’d literally be arrested now. That was 1992.”

One of the more controversial segments was “Airport Security Sketch,” in which Stone played a woman who gets stopped by airport security and asked to remove one item of clothing at a time. Stone isn’t carrying anything dangerous, the security guards just want to see her take her clothes off. Carvey appeared as an Indian security guard.

“I want to apologize publicly for the security check sketch where I played an Indian man and we’re convincing Sharon, her character, or whatever — to take her clothes off to go through the security thing,” Carvey said, with Spade chiming in that it was “so offensive.”

“It’s so 1992, you know, it’s from another era,” Carvey continued.

Stone said she actually didn’t mind the sketch at all, adding: “I know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony. And I think that we were all committing misdemeanors [back then] because we didn’t think there was something wrong then. We didn’t have this sense. That was funny to me, I didn’t care. I was fine being the butt of the joke.”

[From NBC News]

Was Sharon’s character really the butt of the joke? From my 2024 vantage point I think it’s the guys in the sketch who are the jokes; they come off as giggling school boys who can’t think of anything better to do with a woman than ask her to take her clothes off. I can’t help but think of Sharon Stone doing the sketch now, and imagine her stripping, proud and secure in her presence, knowing full well the men are completely in over their heads. It was only right for Dana and David to apologize for the sketch as a whole, and especially for Dana to acknowledge how inappropriate it was for him to play an Indian character. I was intrigued with Sharon’s misdemeanor vs felony analogy, but at the same time I wonder, what is the statute of limitations on the “it was another era” defense?

Also, Lorne Michaels snapping at the too-stunned-to-act security guards had me laughing out loud. “What are you doing? Watching the f–king show?” Nailed it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by GLAAD (@glaad)

photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon and via Instagram and screenshots from YouTube