The Duchess of Sussex was making the most of her time away from Montecito on Thursday. Not only was she spotted at Cipriano’s in Beverly Hills for lunch with Clare Waight Keller, she went out to dinner with friends at Asanebo in Studio City. She wore a grey sweater and jeans, and carried a Goyard Saint Louis Bag – you can see the photos here. I’m so glad she’s outside! I wonder if she was in LA yesterday on business. Hm.

Speaking of, the salt asylum over there is still trying to make “the Sussexes want to come back but we won’t let them” into a thing. It’s a Salt Island exclusive, and it’s just a little delusion which makes them feel better about themselves. In any case, Dick Fitzwilliams has so many thoughts about how Harry would be allowed to visit his father but Meghan will never be allowed to “work” for the Firm ever again, because she’s Black.

Meghan Markle has appeared in London via video link to open a new wing of an animal charity – but a royal expert believes the chances of the Duchess (and Duke) of Sussex returning to the UK on a more frequent basis remain slim. The Duchess made a virtual appearance at the Mayhew vet clinic in north-west London on Wednesday to open the Oli Juste ward, named after ‘dear friend’ and dog behaviourist Mr Juste, who died suddenly in January 2022.

But royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams has told MailOnline that, despite reports, the Sussexes are unlikely to resume any senior duties with the family following years of public fighting – and that any visits to the UK will likely involve Harry and Harry alone.

Mr Fitzwilliams said: ‘Harry’s visit wasn’t insincere in terms of wanting to see his family, but it’s absolutely out of the question they could resume royal duties while members of the royal family don’t trust them because of the way they have behaved. They appear to be behind the idea that there might be some form of activity Harry might be interested in picking up during this very difficult time for the royal family while the King is ill and Catherine is still recuperating.’

‘Just hypothetically, assume the situation was such that the royal family felt they could do with a bit of help if Harry, by one reason or another, did undertake duties: it would become a strange circus because the world’s media would be covering it. Harry will come back, I’m sure, to see his father. That’s different. Whether he comes with Meghan, it might be best not to.’

Mr Fitzwilliams added that while a return to royal work ‘might appeal’ to the Sussexes, the rift created through what he called the ‘big three’ – the controversial 2021 Oprah interview, their Netflix series and Harry’s memoir, Spare – made it an unlikely possibility.

‘It may well be they were putting out feelers that he would step in given the circumstances. But consider how weird it would be,’ he said. ‘The whole point is there was a total breakdown of trust between the royal family and Harry and Meghan – certainly between William and Harry. There is no way he could be trusted. The royals have to operate with dignity and the Sussexes, in my view, do not have much dignity. It’s just not a goer. Harry may have been angling towards offering to help but while it may sound helpful on one level it would reduce things to a farce. What would be the public reaction? The monarchy has to have cache. The Kardashians, and I am not comparing them directly, do not have cache. There has to be an amount of that for the family to be taken seriously. There wouldn’t be if Harry and Meghan returned. It’s a non-starter.’

‘What of Charles seeing his grandchildren – what about Lily and Archie? We will see in time,’ Mr Fitzwilliams concluded. ‘The situation is very difficult and obviously one thing that is not going to work is anything that reduces the gravitas of the monarchy, the dignity of the monarchy. But Harry is clearly concerned for his father and will be here again – when and in what circumstances, that’s a “watch this space”.’

[From The Daily Mail]

You heard it here first, people – the dignity of the monarchy is sacrosanct, as it rests on a king who once told his married mistress that he wanted to be her tampon and now that mistress is queen. As much as these people complain about “the Kardashians,” the Windsors would love that kind of attention and that kind of fame. William has been making dumb documentaries too (which no one watches) and the Windsors can’t exist without emptying out their purses on a daily basis to the tabloids. These people are too stupid to understand that they should have been begging the Sussexes to return for years, but you can’t fix stupid so here we are. I’m so glad Harry and Meghan are out of there and just living their lives.

Meghan Markle goes casual for swanky dinner date with friends in LA https://t.co/Q3h52oICSs pic.twitter.com/ApbmvKrStv

— Page Six (@PageSix) February 23, 2024

The Duchess of Sussex has lunch date with friends at Cipriani in Beverly Hills https://t.co/ijwaRCkjVi via @DailyMailCeleb
Wearing @maxmara

— What Meghan Wore (@WhatMeghanWore) February 22, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Carey Mulligan wore a pretty good Schiaparelli to the Berlinale premiere of Spaceman (where Carey costars with Adam Sandler). [RCFA]
LMAO – E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers say they’re watching Donald Trump and they’ll “pounce” and sue him for a third time if even whispers their client’s name. [Jezebel]
Jennifer Aniston’s shorter hairstyle is a vintage throwback. [LaineyGossip]
Review of The New Look. [Pajiba]
This Buzzfeed post just called me a Boomer. [Buzzfeed]
Angelina Jolie spent the day at Atelier Jolie in NYC. [JustJared]
This guy has evil brows. Brows of Doom, even. [Socialite Life]
Millie Bobby Brown snuggles up to her fiance. [Hollywood Life]
What did Drew Barrymore get for her birthday? [Seriously OMG]
A social media account devoted to dad jokes! [OMG Blog]

“Superhero Fatigue” is the name of the game. There’s been a deep shift over the past year or two, where tens of millions of superhero-fans suddenly got really f–king tired of what was on offer. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantunmania was released a year ago to a lukewarm reception and it barely made its cost back for Marvel. The Marvels was unquestionably a huge bomb. And then there was the whole Jonathan Majors mess – Majors’ Kang was supposed to be the centerpiece of like four future Marvel projects. Instead, they fired him as soon as he was convicted of abusing his girlfriend. So, what’s going on with Marvel these days? They are “quietly retooling,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. There was some interesting stuff in this piece:

Marvel isn’t doing endless reshoots anymore: These public-facing moves come as studio boss Kevin Feige recalibrates the creative direction behind the scenes. Early in February, the company completed reshoots for Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, the WandaVision spinoff starring Kathryn Hahn that is expected to hit Disney+ this fall. The company usually budgets five days of reshoots into the schedule, but the studio completed the work in just one, fueling a sunny outlook around the show internally, according to sources associated with the series.

Marvel is hiring mature, professional screenwriters & showrunners: The studio also quietly hired Eric Pearson to polish the script for Fantastic Four, which will shoot this summer in London. Pearson is a company stalwart who worked on Thor: Ragnarok and Black Widow and has a reputation for taking projects over the finish line. Marvel also hired Joanna Calo, the showrunner of acclaimed FX series The Bear, to work on the script for Thunderbolts, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The film will begin shooting in March in Atlanta. Her hiring adds a flair of prestige to the project, which stars Florence Pugh and — according to a source who has read previous drafts of the script — centers on villains and antiheroes going on a mission that was supposed to end with their deaths.

Cleaning up the Jonathan Majors mess: Marvel is also cleaning up the creative mess left in the wake of Jonathan Majors, the once-rising actor cast to play the lynchpin villain role in the next Avengers movies but who in December was found guilty of reckless assault in the third degree and harassment in a Manhattan court after a domestic incident with his ex-partner, a movement coach he met while working on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Marvel dropped Majors hours after the conviction and is rewriting those movies, which will now either minimize the character or excise him entirely. The first of the new Avengers movies, due out in 2026, was initially titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty but will be getting a new title to remove the character’s name, though sources say that even before Majors’ conviction, the studio was making moves to minimize the character after Quantumania underperformed, grossing $476 million.

Giving more control to showrunners: On the TV side, Marvel has been reorganizing its operations to allow for greater control from showrunners, a move made after the critical failure of the expensive Samuel L. Jackson spy series Secret Invasion, which sidelined executive producer Kyle Bradstreet after a year, with various creative factions vying for influence in his wake.

A retooling, not a reboot: “The focus is internal this year,” says one insider of all the tinkering going on behind the scenes. Execs are not calling it a reboot, not even a soft one, but more of a creative retooling. It’s no secret that since the 2019 Avengers: Endgame, the company was asked to scale up in an unprecedented way to feed its fledgling streaming service, Disney+, then a top priority for Disney, which was in the thick of the streaming wars. “Some of our studios lost a little focus. So the first step that we’ve taken is that we’ve reduced volume,” Bob Iger said on a Feb. 7 earnings call. “We’ve reduced output, particularly at Marvel,” in order to ensure “the films you’re making can be even better.”

The strikes helped Marvel: The dual writers and actors strikes, while costly to Hollywood, ironically gave Marvel breathing space. It was able to reschedule its movies so that only Deadpool & Wolverine will be released in 2024. And only two series — Echo and Agatha — are bowing on Disney+ this year. Other movies remain in the script stage, while TV shows (such as Ironheart) have filmed, but have no release date in sight. It is all designed to give creatives some breathing room and give audiences the chance to miss the MCU, just a little bit. “They’re not going to give up,” says a source who has worked with Marvel over the past year. “They want to make something great.”

[From THR]

Here’s the thing: Marvel is now taking/getting credit for reinventing the wheel. They’re doing things they should have been doing all along, like hiring a good script doctor to polish their scripts months before the production begins, and hiring qualified, professional show-runners and giving them power and a lot of creative control. That’s what was supposed to happen, dumbasses! Believe it or not, before this modern era of superhero filmmaking, most productions didn’t have to block out millions in the budget for expensive reshoots, nor did every problem get “solved” in post, with the use of CGI and what have you. I think one of the most telling moments of “superhero fatigue” was the larger conversation about how Marvel’s VFX increasingly looks cheap and ugly, to the point where no one could focus on whatever plot. I am glad that it sounds like they’re completely reimagining what they’ll do with Kang and those stories though. Again, that’s what should happen!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Jason and Kylie Kelce met through Tinder. The couple, who have been married since 2018 and share three daughters, are not shy or ashamed about their origin story and have told it publicly several times. In fact, this past Valentine’s Day, Travis took Kylie out to dinner while wearing a Tinder shirt! So what’s this first date story that merits so many retellings? Well, it involves Jason getting drunk and falling asleep at a bar in the middle of the date. On this week’s episode of New Heights, we get to hear the story yet again, only from a third perspective. Eagles teammate Beau Allen appeared as a guest and described being the one who had to help carry a passed out Jason out of the bar.

Jason Kelce didn’t leave the greatest first impression with his wife Kylie! On the latest episode of the New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce podcast released on Wednesday, guest Beau Allen gave his take on the story of how his Philadelphia Eagles teammate Jason, 36, fell asleep at the bar on his first date with now-wife Kylie, 31.

“That was physically one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Allen, 32, recalled on the podcast as Jason laughed. “That was harder than climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, maybe,” he joked.

Allen shared that he was hanging out with Jason ahead of his first date with Kylie after the pair met on Tinder. “… For a week or two leading up to you guys meeting they were chit chatting online and Kelce’s talking about this girl and saying, ‘I really like this girl, I gotta make a good first impression,’ ”he said.

Allen went on to say that the pair had “pre-gamed” ahead of attending a holiday party in Philadelphia that evening as Jason announced he was going on his first date with Kylie that same night.

“Kelce’s like, ‘Yeah, I think we’re going to meet up with this girl,’ and I’d heard all about her and I’m excited to meet her,” Allen continued. “And the night just went a little bit sideways — and Kelce fell asleep on the bar, like snoozing.”

This hasn’t been the first time Jason has fallen asleep at the bar the pair shared, as Allen added that he has a “disturbing amount of like photos of [Jason] just asleep in various places.”

The football nose tackle then had the difficult task of trying to move Jason. “… It’s like cobblestone streets and you’re fighting me. I’m like straining and I dropped you,” he admitted on the podcast.

“I know I was sleeping but I remember it,” Jason said. “I remember fighting you and laughing my a– off.”

He then asked Allen if he was “shocked” Kylie agreed to go on a second date with him. “I was slightly surprised,” Allen responded jokingly. “But you’re a great guy, you know, charming … how can you not want to go on a second date with you?”

[From People]

Look, I like Jason Kelce and think he’s probably as good a dude as he seems, but I don’t know about that first date story! I wasn’t there and have no physical attraction/connection with him like Kylie does but if a girlfriend told me a story about their date getting drunk and falling asleep during the first date, it would seem like a major red flag to me! Am I being too judgy? Clearly, Kylie saw something in Jason while he was awake, though, so it all worked out in the end. I truly get the feeling that life with Jason is never a dull moment and that every day is an adventure.

During the pod, the brothers also discussed Jason’s cameo on the Season 3 premiere of Abbott Elementary earlier this month. It takes place in Philadelphia, so it makes sense that Eagles players would pop up at some point. To prep for watching his brother’s appearance, Travis started binge-watching the series, loves it, and urged listeners to watch it, too.

“I love that show, man. It’s one of my favorites. I just started binge-watching the first season,” Travis, 34, revealed, before Jason, 36, called the show “great” as he gave a “shout-out” to its creator and star, Quinta Brunson.

“I love what this show represents. And anything that shines light on public schools and the Philadelphia school system is pretty special,” the Eagles center said. “And Quinta does a fantastic job, as does the whole crew over there at Abbott Elementary, so it was an honor that they asked us to be a part of it for sure.”

Travis gave a shout-out to Abbott Elementary as he encouraged listeners to watch it. “I guarantee you’ll f—— like it. A lot of stuff you can relate to if you went to public school,” he said, adding that “the dynamic between the teachers is the best. I love it.”

[From People]

Well, no lies detected there! I love Abbott Elementary and am excited that it’s back. I second Travis and totally recommend anyone who hasn’t seen it to check it out. It airs on ABC and you can stream it through their app or on Hulu. Jason and his teammates appeared on the episode that aired on February 7.

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Greta Gerwig covers Time Magazine as one of their “women of the year”…in February?? Don’t get me wrong, the past twelve months have been great for Greta and given her success with Barbie, she can write her own ticket and that’s exactly what she’s doing. I just don’t get why this is happening in February! In any case, this is the first big interview Gerwig has given since she was snubbed for a Best Director Oscar nomination for Barbie. This is not a debate – she was snubbed. But she’s dealing with it well and she’s not making a big thing about it (even though she would be well within her rights to do just that). It looks like she’s already onto her next project, an adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia. Some highlights from Time:

On Barbie’s success: “I remember thinking, If this works, everyone is going to think later that it was inevitable. They’ll say, ‘Well, but it was Barbie.’ But this was not guaranteed.”

She was working on Narnia before Barbie: “Knowing that I’d laid the groundwork for Narnia and wanted to return to it—that’s probably something I set up for myself psychologically. Because I know the right thing, for me anyway, is to keep making movies. Whatever happens, good or bad, you’ve got to keep going….It’s never not astonishing to me that somebody gives you money to make a movie.”

Her movies aren’t just “for women”: “I always think about the intuitive way you love a song or a movie. You love something, and you just love it. You don’t think to yourself, ‘I have to love this because it’s by a woman, for a woman.’ That’s part of it. But it’s not why you love it. You love it because it’s great.”

The uneasy relationship between women and their ambition in a patriarchal society. “I don’t know if it’s gendered.But I know I want to be able to make a body of work that feels like it’s undeniable in terms of the work itself. I don’t want there to be an asterisk next to my name. Do I have more of that than male filmmakers? I don’t know! I know plenty of deeply insecure male filmmakers who are plagued in their own ways.”

On the Oscar snubs: “Of course I wanted it for Margot. But I’m just happy we all get to be there together.” There’s also, she points out, ample accolades for the film at the Oscars. “A friend’s mom said to me, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t get nominated,’” she says, laughing. “I said, ‘But I did. I got an Oscar nomination.’ She was like, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful for you!’ I was like, ‘I know!’”

Movies are for everyone: “You don’t need specialized knowledge to watch a movie. All you need is your human experience. Everybody knows what it is to love people, and everybody knows what it is to lose people.”

[From Time]

“You don’t need specialized knowledge to watch a movie.” This is why I hope she’ll never sign on to direct a superhero movie, because you have to watch everything in a particular order to know this or that backstory. As for what she says about the Oscar snubs… she’s a positive person, an optimist, and that’s reflected here. But make no mistake, she got the message. The Hollywood power brokers have told her in no uncertain terms that while they appreciate that her “doll movie” was so successful, they don’t consider it important or real “art.” Gerwig sees the glass as half full – regardless of the snubs, she still gets to make whatever she wants now.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid. Cover courtesy of Time.

As part of Prince William’s “pay attention to ME and not my brother” blitz this week, he ran to Roya Nikkhah at the Times to preview his latest housing scheme. William plans to build some form of “public housing” on Duchy of Cornwall land. The planned 24 homes will be built in Cornwall and William thinks the whole thing will only cost £3 million (it will not). William billed this project as part of his bid to “end homelessness,” because that dumbass loves to overpromise and hype himself as the savior of homeless people. In any case, people who are actually familiar with Cornwall’s real estate crisis are extremely peeved about William and his scheme. You can read the full piece here at Byline (it’s very interesting) and here are some highlights:

Cornish councillors and activists have warned that plans by the £1 billion Duchy of Cornwall estate – now controlled by Prince William – to build 24 homes for homeless people on Crown land will make little dent in a housing crisis that has left 23,000 people waiting for a council home.

Cornwall Council Labour group Leader Jayne Kirkham welcomed the scheme but told Byline Times that it represents a drop in the ocean to tackle the issue. “Obviously we need something more systemic than a project like this,” she said. “It’s a huge problem. We are struggling all across Cornwall. I’ve seen many families evicted from their private rented accommodation and having to live in caravans. It affects the kids’ schools, and parents’ jobs.”

Coastal Cornwall has a persistent issue with thousands of unregulated holiday lets and (often empty) second homes vastly outnumbering the number of homes available for rent. AirBnb listings show that, as of 20 February 2024, there are 976 ‘entire homes’ available as short-term holiday lets in Cornwall for more than £240 a night. Yet there are just 348 homes currently available for general private rent in the entire county listed on RightMove. Another site, OpenRent, lists 117; while OnTheMarket lists 145. Cornwall has a population of 570,000 people.

Lib Dem Councillor Thalia Marrington represents Mousehole and Newlyn, fishing communities which appear deserted at certain times due to the prevalence of second homes and holiday lets.

“You can never build enough because people want to move ‘down to lovely Cornwall’,” she told Byline Times. “But we have such a massive crisis. There are roughly 23,000 on the housing waiting list in Cornwall. When you’re talking about 24 homes… As soon as you hear ‘24’ you don’t look into it too much more, because it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are already around 800 households in emergency temporary accommodation here… Yet we’ve got thousands of AirBnbs and second homes in Cornwall, so you’ve got so much [housing] stock gone.”

“[William’s project is] all wrong housing – it’s houses with five bedrooms,” she said. “It’s not going to help the housing crisis… There seems to be the blanket approach that any housebuilding is good because they’re all sold, that stock is ‘trickling down’ [to locals]. It’s the opposite.”

Anti-monarchy campaign group Republic points out that the Duchy estate is not Prince William’s personal property but that of the Crown. It is, in effect, gifted by Parliament to the heir who is the eldest son of the monarch. The Duchy estate may expect to make profit from the homes, which will at any rate remain its asset, rather than being ‘donated’ to St Petrocs.

Graham Smith, Republic CEO, said: “The country will spend at least £3.4 billion on the monarchy over the next decade. That’s money that could be invested in homes for those who most need them, instead of two dozen palatial homes for one family.” Smith argues that Prince William is “part of the problem”. “Rather than be thankful for a few homes built on Duchy land, which William will profit from, we all need to be demanding the return of the Duchy to full public ownership and an end to the monarchy,” he told this newspaper.

[From Byline Times]

It’s always been so bizarre to me that British people, by and large, do not object to the fundamental fact that “the crown” owns so much real estate across the UK. Home ownership is such a fundamental part to “building wealth” for so many families, but British people are stuck in a deeply flawed system where they’ll live all their lives as renters, many of them in homes and farms owned by the crown or various duchies. As for William’s planned Cornwall housing development… it is a drop in the bucket and he’s also not going to be able to build 24 homes that cheaply, and clearly, what’s needed is political movement and the government stepping in and changing the local laws for renters and development. All of the people criticizing William’s big scheme should also know that he probably won’t even follow through! He gets bored a lot and just drops sh-t all the time.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Last summer, Dan Wootton’s fall from “grace” finally happened. Wootton had screwed over too many people and done too many terrible, terrible things over the course of his career. While he was “protected” for years, mostly as a result of the extensive blackmail material he assembled, at the end of the day, most of his powerful allies wouldn’t stick their necks out for him. By the fall of 2023, Wootton had been sh-tcanned from all of his jobs – fired from the Mail, suspended from GB News, and all of his former employers (even the Sun) were investigating his actions. He was reported to the Metropolitan police as well and they opened up some kind of investigation into his decades of abuse and blackmail. Quelle surprise, nothing has come out of the police investigation.

Police have confirmed they will be taking no further action over criminal allegations against Dan Wootton, the TV presenter has said. The broadcaster – who was suspended by GB News over a separate matter in September – claimed to have been “the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt through the left-wing and social media”.

“Well six months on, I have now been completely cleared in two investigations by the Metropolitan and Scottish Police, who have confirmed they will be taking no further action,” he said in a statement issued to the Guido Fawkes website.

“While I knew this would always be the outcome, the process is now the punishment, with social media acting as the executioner,” Wootton added.

The allegations, which Wootton always vehemently denied, related to the use of deception and blackmail to obtain sexual images.

The New Zealand-born presenter continued: “Margaret Thatcher once said that if you ever get trial by media, or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies. She was right. It is high time that all of our ancient rights were once again upheld, chief among them the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law. If it falls to me to be the champion of those rights, then so be it. It is a fight I am more than willing to take up, not just for me but for all of us.”

[From The Independent]

This is all he has – “It is high time that all of our ancient rights were once again upheld, chief among them the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law.” I’m actually shocked that he didn’t cry about wokeism. I wasn’t expecting much to happen to Wootton on the legal side, although I seem to remember that several of his victims did speak to the police and it’s a shame their stories weren’t taken seriously by the Met. The real situation is with News Corp and the Mail’s in-house investigations about what Wootton was doing and how he was operating on the job and among his newsroom colleagues. That’s the kind of stuff which will get him blackballed from all English-speaking media outlets forever.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, GB News screencaps.

King Charles was in Sandringham over the weekend, where he stepped out for church on Sunday. He came back to London on Monday or Tuesday, and on Wednesday, he did his first in-person “audience” with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he was diagnosed with cancer. It felt like Charles was avoiding most in-person meetings, but the “weekly audience” couldn’t be done via Zoom, so here we are. In Charles’s case, the prime minister meetings seem to be more like “once a fortnight” or “once a month.” My guess is that Sunak also agreed ahead of time to the videographer and photographers recording the first few minutes of the meeting too. They met at Buckingham Palace.

Britain’s King Charles said during a meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday he had been reduced to tears by messages of good will following his cancer diagnosis. The palace announced earlier this month that Charles, 75, had been diagnosed with a form of cancer, less than 18 months into his reign.

“I’ve had so many wonderful messages and cards … it’s reduced me to tears most of the time,” Charles said during his weekly audience with Sunak.

“Everyone is behind you,” Sunak responded.

The monarch holds weekly audiences alone with the prime minister, although occasionally cameras have been allowed to capture the start of the meetings. Wednesday’s meeting is the first formal in-person audience Charles has held with Sunak since it was revealed that he was suffering from an unspecified form of cancer. Buckingham Palace has said the king will continue to carry out state business and his official paperwork while he undergoes cancer treatment.

Sunak began the exchange by telling Charles it was wonderful to see him looking so well.

“Well it’s all done by mirrors,” Charles joked.

[From Reuters]

This actually made me a little bit sad. I know Charles is a terrible father and he destroyed his first marriage and all of that, but still… he’s really feeling his mortality these days and I think his cancer treatments have knocked him on his ass. I feel sorry for him.

Now, I do want to talk about the timing of this – Charles ensures that he’s seen doing state business and meeting with Sunak just a day after his heir dove headfirst into an international political situation? In recent days, there has been a lot of commentary about how Charles’s reign will be short and “this is how King William will rule” and… yeah, I think Charles wanted to remind everyone that he’s still here.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

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By all accounts, Blake Lively is a pretty hands-on mom. She has four children with husband Ryan Reynolds, daughters James, nine, Inez, seven, and Betty, four, and a fourth child who we don’t know anything about other than they are already a year old. Maybe Taylor Swift will give us the hot goss on Baby #4 in her next album. Anyway, this year’s Super Bowl looked a lot different than last year’s for Blake, when she used the occasion to slyly reveal via Instagram that she’d given birth. As you probably know, Blake has been Taylor Swift’s +1 at a lot of Kansas City Chiefs games this season, including the Super Bowl. There was even a hilarious Insta post from Ryan with the Deadpool trailer on the TV in the background as he asked, “Has anyone seen my wife?” We did see her, Ryan!

As it turns out, Blake’s trip to Vegas was her first overnight away from her kids, and she lived it up! In a funny post this week, she talked about her night of freedom. She wore crazy clothes, borrowed a lot of jewelry, took silly pictures, and went clubbing! Oh, what a night.

“Last week I left my kids for the first time ever,” Blake wrote on Instagram Feb. 20, referring to her and Ryan’s daughters James, 9, Inez, 7, and Betty, 4, as well as a fourth child whose birth they revealed in February 2023.

And for her rare mom’s night out, she went all out with her Super Bowl look, noting that it was also first time that she “wore pants that were shoes.”

Sharing new photos of the girls’ trip, Blake gave a closer look at her red Adidas track suit—complete with the shoe pants—while she posed in her Las Vegas hotel room. The Gossip Girl actress also showed off her stunning bracelet collection, joking that she “borrowed more jewelry than the skeleton in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.”

One of her bracelets was even dedicated to husband Ryan and featured the Deadpool & Wolverine poster design, with Blake adding, “I treated a friendship bracelet like a Flat Stanley for my husband like I didn’t realize it wasn’t ’07.”

After witnessing the Chiefs take home the trophy, the 36-year-old then joined in on the afterparty celebrations, though she joked that maybe a night of partying is no longer for her. “I went clubbing,” she quipped. “Now I know what my episode of the Twilight Zone would look like.”

[From E Online]

Hey, good for Blake! I think every mom understands the need for a little “me time” and what a better first trip away than a quick overnighter to watch your bestie’s boyfriend win the Super Bowl? And good on Ryan for setting the example that dads are parents who take care of their kids too and not just glorified babysitters. I had no idea until I saw the picture that her pants were also shoes. Blake has always been willing to try new fashion, so power to her, I guess. Having my pants attached to my shoes would make me feel like I’m wearing the bottom half of a child’s onesie, though! I also think the “Flat Stanley” Deadpool/Wolverine friendship bracelet was an adorable touch. Nice, subtle promotion to the Swifties.

When Blake got home, she recreated Ryan’s “where’s my wife” post, only captioned it, “Honey I’m home. My day was good. Yours?” Ryan and Blake’s public relationship where they tease and troll each other cracks me up and really endears both of them to me. I relate: Last week, Mr. Rosie made a Valentine’s Day post about me with unfortunate, funny pictures of me. I wasn’t mad at all. In fact, I’m currently plotting my revenge for his birthday post next month.

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The Guardian is basically the only British newspaper regularly questioning what the hell is going on with the Windsors. It’s mostly being done by Guardian columnists, but still. Recently, the Guardian published an extremely accurate column about the Sussexes’ trip to Jamaica, and how Harry and Meghan really could have been Britain’s best ambassadors, mostly because Meghan is “soft power dynamite.” Especially in comparison to diplomatic “kryptonite” William and Kate. Late last year, as Omid Scobie’s Endgame was making waves and there was a new round of “royal racism” talk, Zoe Williams wrote a funny piece in the Guardian about how the Windsors are “simply not in the intellectual shape to fight” accusations of racism. Well, Williams is back with her take on Prince William’s extremely bad performance at the BAFTAs, an organization for which he has served as president for fourteen years.

Actors know how to pose: The photos – all those magnificent faces that only actors know how to make – the “I’m so surprised to have won on this completely unsurprising occasion” face; the “of course I don’t mind not winning, the winner who won is, by happy chance, much more important to me than myself” face; the knowing side-eye, the straight-down-the-lens candour, the beaming sincerity. These are faces only the pros can make perfect. If the rest of us tried any of them, we’d look like we just got caught shoplifting.

And then there’s William: And into this Bafta array, as its president, steps Prince William. This job was not really optional for him. The only time in the organisation’s history that it hasn’t been led by a member of the royal family is when it was Richard Attenborough, who is like royal-plus. William, grinning at the rising stars Phoebe Dynevor, Ayo Edebiri, Sophie Wilde and Mia McKenna-Bruce, hits the summit of his endearing awkwardness. In the great schism of the princes, in which all right-thinking Britons were supposed to pick a side, everyone who chose the elder and who was not motivated by fervour against the wokerati, misogynoir or keenly felt anti-Americanism was really responding to William’s self-consciousness.

William can’t even do the bare bones of the job: But it’s just so relatable. Which of us hasn’t smiled a little too widely, in anxiety, and then suddenly found in the moment that using all those muscles is surprisingly taxing, and then forgotten what we were going to say, and, oh, hell, now the terror is in our eyes, that’s not going to help, and now we’ve forgotten our name, all we can remember is that we had one job, for which we’ve been preparing all our lives, which is to be able to talk and smile, if not simultaneously, at least in quick succession?

Rictus grin formations: OK, that’s two jobs. But which of us hasn’t felt like that? A body language expert told me recently that King Charles is always playing with his cufflinks and Prince Harry is always buttoning the button that’s already buttoned. These are self-comforting moves to deal with social anxiety. But Prince William is off the scale, seeking comfort in rictus grin formations that most evolved humans don’t know how to activate any more, having last used them trying to make peace with a cheetah.

[From The Guardian]

Yes, this was an entire column devoted to William’s awkwardness. He’s remarkably charisma-free and incapable of simply standing with a group of actors and making small talk. That’s it – he can’t do it. It reminds me a bit of when they sent Prince Edward and Sophie to the Royal Variety show and Sophie was incredibly rude to comedian Frank Skinner, who had simply donated his time for a good cause. William was blundering around at the BAFTAs, telling people he didn’t watch any of their films and suggesting that an actress had a lot of “fun” on a film where her character is raped. He’s just… deeply incapable.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.