Cynthia Erivo has been nominated for tons of awards and she’s been in tons of awards seasons. But it feels like this is the first time where she’s really gotten this kind of attention, this kind of hype, and she’s been in the center of a major hit movie? What’s nice about that is Cynthia has really met the moment. I’ve said this before, but I expected Wicked’s promotion and awards season to be messy, because both Cynthia and Ariana had reputations for being a bit prickly or not very easy-going. But they’ve both surprised me so much. Cynthia has been full of grace, good humor and professionalism, as has Ariana. Anyway, Cynthia wore Armani to the Critics Choice Awards – while she didn’t win, she looked great and I loved seeing her in a sleek look like this.

Meanwhile, Ariana Grande went for a completely bonkers Dior look at the CCAs. It’s wicker basket couture, y’all. It’s terrible but also really funny. I hope she had fun.

Speaking of weird structural garments – which are on-trend currently – Hannah Einbinder wore this custom Louis Vuitton. SO BAD.

Rachel Brosnahan in custom Miu Miu. Like… I did NOT know Lois Lane had all of that going on. Very sexy look.

Natasha Lyonne wore Saint Laurent. I love her, she’s so funny.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

A clip from the Spanish reality show, La Isla de las Tentaciones, has gone massively viral this week and that’s why everyone is saying “Montoya Por Favor!” This is one of the funniest memes I’ve ever seen. [The Evening Standard]
Henry Cavill & Natalie Viscuso attended the AACTA Awards & it looks like Natalie was wearing an engagement ring. [Just Jared]
Brie Larson has a buzzcut?? [Go Fug Yourself]
Angelina Jolie’s Q&A session & speech at the SBIFF were great. [LaineyGossip]
Lance Bass & Lisa Vanderpump posed together. [Socialite Life]
Mormons are having a (sexually repressed) moment. [Pajiba]
Cynthia Nixon defends LGBTQ rights. [OMG Blog]
Mikey Madison’s stylist finally got her out of those satin dresses. [RCFA]
I did not even recognize Heidi Klum. [Seriously OMG]
A couple of Duggars started a YouTube channel. [Starcasm]
Rest in peace, Irv Gotti. [Hollywood Life]
Everything old is new again with workplace sexism. [Buzzfeed]

He ran on water during a storm to stop the babe he cheated on from cheating back. This is cinema and was what R&B used to be about https://t.co/N68MORSByF

— Mbadawe (@LazarusKumi) February 6, 2025

MONTOYA POR FAVOR pic.twitter.com/cpkQZ5zrET

— Netflix España (@NetflixES) February 6, 2025

The past six weeks have been full of drama, lawsuits, accusations, leaked texts, leaked voice memos and leaked footage from Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Some people have already begun to detach themselves from the drama of it all, and I’m not sure if Blake and Justin can keep this up for another year. There was one gossip thread which I was curious about, and curious to see how it would play out in the coming months. That would be Blake Lively texting Justin Baldoni late one night and referring to herself as the Khaleesi and calling Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Swift her “dragons.” Blake’s text came after Taylor and Ryan apparently tried to persuade Baldoni to use “Blake’s rewrites” on some scenes for It Ends With Us. Baldoni took the khaleesi text as what it was, an implied threat that Blake was going to get her way.

For weeks now, Taylor Swift has avoided saying anything about Blake or Justin or any of it. Taylor also hasn’t been seen out with Blake since last fall. Now TMZ says that Taylor really doesn’t appreciate being dragged into this whole chaotic legal situation, and she really doesn’t appreciate Blake leveraging her name to pressure Baldoni.

Taylor Swift feels she was used by Blake Lively in her war with Justin Baldoni, and she resents Blake calling her one of her “dragons” and leveraging her name.

As we reported, there was a critical meeting at Blake and Ryan Reynolds’ NYC penthouse with Justin to discuss a scene that Blake had rewritten for “It Ends with Us.” Justin has said the meeting got super heated, and he felt ambushed because Ryan and Taylor showed up.

But a well-connected source close to Taylor tells TMZ … Taylor came to Blake’s apartment at the time Blake told her to, not knowing anyone else would be there. In other words, Taylor had no idea there was a meeting going on with Justin.

The source goes on to say … Justin was about to leave after the 2-hour meeting as Taylor walked in, and she was introduced to him for the first and only time. We’re told all Taylor said to Justin was how excited she was to see the movie because he was her friend’s boss. Our source says Taylor believes Blake timed her meeting with Justin so Taylor would arrive before he left and is baffled by Blake later characterizing her as her “dragon.” The source adds, “It’s weird to say that about a friend.”

And there’s more … the source says Taylor is also learning Blake has been inappropriately leveraging her name for a long time, like telling a young actress that Taylor “cast her,” which simply did not happen.

But, one source close to Blake has a different take, telling TMZ … Blake believes the relationship is “not strained” with the two still talking regularly. Another source close to the situation says Taylor was pissed about the extent to which she was involved, and specifically she was angry about the “dragons” remark … but Blake has since apologized, they had a good cry and hugged it out.

[From TMZ]

I wonder, I really do. On one side, people close to Taylor aren’t running to TMZ with this kind of info. On the other side, it actually sounds pretty reasonable that Taylor would be like “WTF?” when she read Blake’s dragon text. The detail about Taylor arriving at Blake’s apartment when Blake asked her to come is interesting too. I wonder how Taylor’s publicist Tree Paine is managing this tricky situation.

Interestingly, TMZ wasn’t the only outlet to get a sus Swift exclusive on Thursday. Us Weekly ran a piece called “Taylor Swift Had No Creative Involvement in Blake Lively s It Ends With Us Amid Lawsuit Sources.” Multiple sources tell Us that: “Taylor has always been Blake’s friend, but Taylor doesn’t have any involvement in the case. She wasn’t part of the movie. Taylor was not a producer on the film and had no creative involvement.” Ah… there are concerns in the Swift camp because Baldoni’s lawyers are threatening to depose Taylor and ask her about the dragon text and the meeting in which (Baldoni claims) Taylor pressured Baldoni to use Blake’s rewrites.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Elon Musk and his merry band of Nazi youths are taking a wrecking ball to the federal government. There’s no coming back from any of this, and I sincerely wish American voters understood last year how f–king bad this would get. But here we are, with Musk and the Nazi youths giggling about how it would be cool to loot the Treasury and eliminate Social Security. Well, the Wall Street Journal continues to be extremely skeptical of the sh-tty politics, business and policy of the Trump administration. So WSJ did some digging on one of Musk’s Nazi youths. Guess what they found? A fork found in the kitchen! A childish dumbass with a history of racism and antisemitism online.

A key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department’s central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics. Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending, resigned after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.

“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” the account posted in July, according to the Journal’s review of archived posts.

“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.

After the Journal inquired about the account, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Elez had resigned from his role. In recent days, Elez had emerged at the center of a legal battle over access to sensitive taxpayer information and systems the Treasury Department uses to process trillions of dollars in payments annually. Thursday morning, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Elez could continue to access the department’s payment systems, but limited his ability to share the data. Elez resigned later that same day.

Musk personally urged people to apply to DOGE on X in December, promising long hours and little pay in exchange for the chance to fundamentally remake the federal government. Some of those who answered the call appear to be young Musk loyalists, steeped in internet culture, who share his worldview.

The account, @nullllptr—a misspelling of a keyword in the C++ programming language—was deleted in December, but hundreds of brash, sometimes-sophomoric posts have been archived. The user appeared to have a special dislike for Indian software engineers. “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys,” the user posted in December, referring to large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In June, the user weighed in on the conflict in the Middle East, offering some sympathy for Israel but also posting, “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”

[From WSJ]

I hate all of these people with the power of a thousand suns. I hope everyone who voted for this is impacted directly, I hope this childish, asinine, white supremacist bullsh-t comes to every Trump voter’s door. I’m honestly surprised this douchebag even resigned, and I bet Musk was telling him he didn’t even have to.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, PBS screencap.

This is the calm before the storm – there’s so much happening this weekend, so this should be just an FYI for everything we’re going to cover in the coming days. Tonight, we have the Critics Choice Awards, which will be a pretty low-key event, and we’ll have some fashion coverage on Sunday. There are other awards shows this weekend too, notably the DGAs and PGAs, both held on Saturday in LA. Then we’ve got the Super Bowl on Sunday, and the Super Bowl tends to dominate all of the news for at least 24 hours. But also happening alongside all of that: the Invictus Games. The opening ceremony in Canada will be on Saturday as well. According to GB News, Prince Harry and Meghan are flying up to Canada today:

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are set to arrive in Vancouver today for the 2025 Invictus Games, making the nearly three hour journey from Santa Barbara via private chartered jet.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will check into a city centre hotel ahead of the international sporting event for injured and sick military veterans.

[From GB News]

I’m honestly a little bit surprised they haven’t come even earlier – there are so many advance events, receptions and meetings happening around the games. I also hope Meghan is coming with Harry today and that she’ll be there for the whole Invictus games. In any case, we’ll obviously have lots of Invictus coverage too, especially if we get some good photos.

As I’ve been saying, all of the highly visible events over on Isla de la Saltines have been pretty obvious. I would assume that the Windsors have made so many plans and schemes for how they will try to “thunder-steal.” GB News did a separate story about how “senior royals will be hoping Harry’s attention stays firmly fixed on Canada and that the Duke of Sussex does not distract from the Royal Family’s brilliant start to 2025.” Meaning, the Windsors are focused on what’s happening in Canada and they’re going to throw themselves in front of every camera for the next week.

Last thing: Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer sent his best wishes to the British Invictus team. It would shock me if any of the Windsors even tweeted “good luck” to the veterans participating in the games.

Wishing the best of luck to Team UK ahead of the @InvictusGames25 on Saturday. https://t.co/Y95mfmKNq6

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 6, 2025

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Invictus.

The reason why I haven’t devoted any stand-alone posts to Renee Zellweger’s fashion as she promotes Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is because I have not been impressed by any of her looks. Her style is boring as hell these days, if not actively terrible. This ensemble, for the Rome premiere, is Armani. It’s really bad, omg. [RCFA]
I’m so out of the loop on this, Paul Mescal & Gracie Abrams had a fling but they’re not dealing with each other anymore? [JustJared]
Ariana Grande is making a push for an Oscar. [LaineyGossip]
The stupidest damn timeline. [Jezebel]
The Real Housewives reckon with sexual shame. [Pajiba]
Everyone’s really milking this Kanye West stuff. [Buzzfeed]
Leo Woodall is also making a big push these days. [Socialite Life]
Which celebrities are going to the Super Bowl? [Hollywood Life]
How does Andy Cohen feel about Drew Barrymore’s closeness? [Seriously OMG]
I’ve been cracking up about all of the videos of Taylor Swift dancing & partying at the Grammys. This one is an instant classic. [OMG Blog]

Bad news came out this week: Donald Trump plans to attend the Super Bowl this Sunday in New Orleans. I hope those NOLA witches put a hex on him. But I digress – it seems like it would be a huge security issue, but whatever, I don’t really care. I can only imagine the unhinged things Trump is going to Truth-Social-post about Kendrick Lamar. Politically, the equation is “Kansas City Chiefs = MAGA” and “Philadelphia Eagles = Democrats.” The Chiefs’ management and owners are all MAGA, where the Eagles are decidedly less so. To emphasize that political disparity, reporters asked Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce about Trump’s Super Bowl appearance. Travis’s answer was pretty sh-tty, honestly, especially given Trump’s hissy fit about Taylor Swift last year.

Travis Kelce says “it’s a great honor” to have President Donald Trump attend Super Bowl LIX.

During a media day on Wednesday, Feb. 5, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end was asked to share his reaction to the news that Trump, 78, will be attending Sunday’s championship game in New Orleans — which marks the first time a sitting president has attended.

“That’s awesome. It’s a great honor,” Kelce, 35, told reporters, including PEOPLE. “I think you know, no matter who the president is, I know I’m excited because it’s the biggest game of my life, you know, and having the president there — it’s the best country in the world — and that’s pretty cool.”

The football star’s comments come months after Trump lashed out at his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, following her endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. On Sept. 11, a day after the singer, 35, made her support of the Democratic candidate publicly known, Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends that he “was not a fan of Taylor Swift.” He added, “It was just a question of time… But she’s a very liberal person. She seems to always endorse a Democrat. And she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.”

[From People]

I’m still laughing at “she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.” Taylor wrapped the Eras Tour with billions in the bank. She’s one of the most successful artists of all time and her endorsements of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the past two elections didn’t change that. As for what Travis said… there was a concern, when Travis and Taylor first got together, that Travis was a closet MAGAt. He ended up convincing me that he wasn’t actually MAGA – or all that political in general – but we might have to review this again. It’s possible that Travis is just trying to avoid Trump’s wrath, but I would have appreciated a more ambivalent answer from him, especially given Trump’s comments about Taylor.

Mahomes said basically the same thing as Travis, they were probably fed the same line by Chiefs’ PR department. Mahomes said: “It’s always cool to be able to play in front of a sitting president, someone that is in the top position in our country. I didn’t see that clip but it’s cool to hear that he’s seen me play football and respects the game that I play.” Fun fact: the Mahomes family is apparently pretty out-and-proud MAGA, and Patrick’s wife Brittany was posting MAGA sh-t last year.

Travis Kelce was asked about Donald Trump attending the #SuperBowl. pic.twitter.com/azK35ylOI5

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) February 5, 2025

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Here’s Part 2 of our coverage of the new book which is getting a lot of headlines this week. The book is called Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, and it was written by royal expert/historian Tom Quinn. The Times of London published an exclusive excerpt and, as I said in Part 1, this reads like a choose-your-own-adventure soap opera, the way Quinn is trying to rewrite and reimagine these narratives. You see, *some* people did like the Duchess of Sussex during her brief time in the UK, but those same people also grew to hate her because she was so confident and American and because she didn’t want to be their voiceless doll. If I’m being honest, I’m a little bit surprised by how Quinn’s “sources” say some nice stuff about Meghan, but of course all of the nice stuff is immediately contradicted by “sources” saying that Meghan had a “messiah complex.” These people will never be okay.

Meghan saw quickly that Harry had always been neglected: Meghan’s experience of growing up was totally different. “She spotted immediately that Harry wasn’t quite as central to things as his brother, William,” said a member of the comms team who was particularly close to the duchess. “I don’t think Harry had even thought much about the fact that he was a spare until well into his marriage. I think she was oversensitive on Harry’s behalf and convinced herself he was being treated as completely unimportant.” The strongly held view among current and former royal staff is that Meghan felt she was standing up for her husband, telling “her truth” and encouraging him to tell his, but this was seen as deeply disruptive.

Meghan hated that shack: Moving into Nottingham Cottage in 2017 compounded the tension — “Meghan felt it was so small that it must be a reflection on how the royal family were belittling her husband. She just didn’t understand that real royals don’t care much about houses and material possessions because, having always had them, they take them for granted,” said one member of staff who helped out regularly at Nottingham Cottage. A rather beautiful house in the grounds of a famous palace hardly seemed to Harry the equivalent to being forced to live in a shed at the end of the garden. But for Meghan things were more complex. She saw Kate and William living just a few yards away in Kensington Palace itself with teams of live-in servants.

Meghan undoubtedly felt constrained by protocol. “Meghan quite rightly hated the fact that when she was in Nottingham Cottage, she had to agree well in advance what time she might leave for an appointment or an event and she had to make sure she didn’t leave at the same time as, or clash in any way with, a more senior royal leaving the palace,” a former Kensington Palace staffer said.

How Meghan treated staff: Another problem was the servants: Meghan both loved having everything done for her by the domestic staff and also hated it. As one former staffer said, “Through absolutely no fault of her own, Meghan wasn’t always great with her staff — she just wasn’t used to it as Harry was. So, one minute she would be really friendly, perhaps overfriendly, hugging staff and trying to make friends with them, and the next she would be irritated by the fact they wouldn’t respond instantly at all times of the day and night. At times it got so bad that I heard one of the senior staff mumble that Meghan should really have been employed in the palace kitchens. It’s true that her nickname for a while was the Duchess of Difficult, but she had other, friendlier nicknames, including Mystic Meg, which came about because she was so new agey, so woke, about so many things. She could be difficult because she was finding life difficult — trying to feel her way and work out the intricacies of a positively medieval, labyrinthine system. She couldn’t understand why Charles, for example, was so formal with his mother. She once said, ‘But they’re mother and son — why are they so completely stiff with each other?’ ”

Meghan had her supporters. Many of the ordinary staff liked the fact that she was feisty and wanted to change things for the better. “She was very straightforward and matter-of-fact,” said a former member of the Kensington Palace communications team. But the old guard was against her. One source said, “They [the older, public school-educated advisers] really had it in for Meghan and, to be fair to her, she really stood up to them. But, of course,if you make waves in the royal family, the senior royals will always back the courtiers, because in many cases the senior royals have been friends with the courtiers since childhood.”

Meghan just wanted to do her own thing: According to one of Elizabeth II’s former courtiers, Buckingham Palace grew really worried when they became aware that Meghan had plans for her life as a working royal that were not going to be part of a general strategy agreed with the staff — she just wanted to do her own thing. “But it was never going to be acceptable that Meghan should outshine Princess Anne, Prince Charles [as he then was] and the Queen. Quite rightly, the Queen always had to be the centre and focus of everything the royal family did and I don’t think Meghan understood why that would mean her doing things she didn’t want to do. She didn’t understand that when you join the royal family, you don’t do as you please, you do as you’re told.”

Meghan had a messiah complex! Harry, meanwhile, was delighted by the possibility of freedom, of doing things differently, that Meghan introduced into his life. Senior staff begged him to intervene with Meghan to try to make her toe the line, but by all accounts this was the beginning of what staffers describe as “Harry’s tendency to defend anything and everything Meghan says or does. She really did have a messiah complex,” one of the couple’s former staffers said, pointing out how Meghan was focused on how she could become the best-known and most loved member of the royal family. “I don’t mean that in a critical way because all her big ideas were about doing good. She once said, ‘What Diana started, I want to finish,’ and we took that to mean she wanted to become a sort of globetrotting champion of the poor and the marginalised. She has managed to do this to some extent, but she really wanted to do it as a princess and with the full backing of the royal family, but on a part-time basis.”

Meghan fought back: “You’ve got to hand it to her,” a former member of her staff said. “She really is a fighter.” One source said Meghan thought Kate was “just too eager to please, too much a goody-two-shoes girl”. Yet Kate did manage to negotiate difficult matters with staff and family relationships. The answer as to how is summed up neatly by a former member of the Kensington Palace staff.

Kate is a stronger person than Meghan: “Kate is someone who slowly and carefully absorbs the atmosphere of a place, the relationship between people and the rules. She doesn’t jump in straight away and try to change everything to suit her way of thinking. She bides her time and is very intelligent and intuitive about other people, what they do and how they behave. She was also coached — not just by William, who wanted Kate to avoid the problems his mother had encountered, but also by the staff. Kate was always happy to accept advice both from the lower staff, with whom she got on very well, and from the courtiers, even though some of them were initially very snooty about her. It was the same kind of backbiting gossipy criticism that Meghan had to put up with, but Kate is actually a much stronger person than Meghan in many ways. Yet what Meghan saw as Kate being pushed around, Kate saw as an essential part of being a member of the royal family.”

Meghan was a spare as well: “Kate’s view of Meghan was always implied rather than spoken, I think. It was that Meghan thought she knew better than an institution that had been in business for 1,000 years and more. Kate was never going to buy that.” The irony, given all that has been written about Harry being the “spare”, is that at Kensington Palace, it was clearly Meghan who felt she could not find her place; she too was a spare.

[From The Times]

As always, I’m sort of amazed by how much projection is built into these people’s assessments of Meghan. It’s not that Meghan ever said or indicated that she wasn’t happy in Nottingham Cottage, it’s that the courtiers knew that they were treating the Sussexes differently on purpose, and they projected those snubs onto Meghan and made it sound like she was irritated. It’s the same with “Meghan hated the protocol” – she hated that she was being controlled to a ridiculous level and she could see that other royal women were not being treated the same way. It’s also obscene to say that Kate is stronger – Kate was so insecure about Meghan, Kate spread racist lies about Meghan, openly suggested that Meghan’s Black child would look bad for the royal family, and Kate still style-stalks and abuses her sister-in-law to this very day.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Instar.

Would you believe that there’s a brand new book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their brief time as a married couple in the UK? You would think that every story had been told, every meeting dissected, every lie amplified ad nauseum by now. But you can always trust these people to find brand new ways of crying about the two years Meghan spent in the UK. The latest book is called Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants by Tom Quinn. It’s not solely about the Sussexes, although the bulk of the Times’ exclusive excerpt is obviously about them. Surprise! There’s a lot in this excerpt, so I’m splitting it up into two posts.

Meghan expected Harry to be a billionaire! Meghan Markle had a typically American view of the royal family before she joined it — for her, life was all about castles, glittering balls and limitless wealth and ease. As one royal staff member put it, “She expected a billionaire and she got a millionaire.” When Meghan discovered that Harry was only worth about £20 million, she realised she needed to reassess other assumptions she’d made about this strange new family. Harry, it seemed, had spent little time explaining exactly how strange and demanding his family really are. But then, having everything done for you throughout your life by staff gives you a complacent air, something several of Harry’s former Kensington Palace advisers have noted.

William & Charles’s tantrums: Protocol means suits must be pressed and laid out after a period of consultation the night before; shoes must be polished, ties chosen. Baths must be run at precisely the same time each day and both King Charles and the Prince of Wales, Prince William, are prone to tantrums if things are not done to their liking. “They both get irritated very quickly,” one former member of staff said. “They are very picky. It comes naturally to them.”

Kate calms William: The source added, “I don’t know where William would be without Kate — she hasn’t had everything done for her throughout her life, so she calms him down when he gets a bit fractious. She said he sometimes has to be treated as her fourth child.”

Meghan hated the courtiers & hierarchy: “Meghan really disliked the hierarchy,” a member of her former team said. “Many of the rules do seem pretty pointless and exist only so that the relative status of each senior royal is protected. And the senior royals are such a sensitive bunch — if one gets a gold pen or a new car, they all want one. Meghan thought they behaved like babies.”

The old guards hated Meghan right away: Meghan was a moderniser by nature. She was someone who wanted to get things done and change the status quo. She was actually very good at persuading some of the staff, even the junior staff, to be on her side. According to my sources, Meghan became especially friendly and close to one particular member of staff, who was really quite junior, and this was seen as inappropriate by the senior royals. A former member of the Kensington Palace staff said, “When someone arrives from the United States and tries to change things, the old guard really don’t like it. And the old guard are terrific snobs. They have to be less obviously snobbish today, but it’s still there.

What a bizarre statement: “I can tell you that if William had wanted to marry Meghan Markle, it would’ve been a step too far… [But] Harry was never going to be king. The courtiers and ladies-in-waiting and communications teams thought Meghan would keep Harry out of trouble; give him something to focus on.”

William & Kate liked Meghan at first! It’s easy to forget that when Harry first started dating Meghan, both William and Kate found her delightful — “They thought she was a breath of fresh air,” one staffer remembered. A junior member of staff explained that in the early days when the Fab Four were still getting along, she once came across Meghan and William doing a jokey parody of Fifties jiving together. William was apparently very good at it.

William hated Meghan’s tactile, friendly nature: But problems began to arise fairly early on. Tension developed between William and Harry as a result of Meghan’s warm, friendly, hug-everyone approach. Kate, William and Charles tended to flinch when she moved in for a hug. Meghan was understandably hurt, as everyone apparently hugs everyone in California. Meghan even tried to hug a singularly stiff Old Etonian equerry. He too flinched as if she’d tried to poke him in the eye, as another member of staff put it. This tactile manner made William uncomfortable because Meghan hugged him virtually every time they bumped into each other; the hugging and cheek-kissing fuelled gossip among the staff that Meghan was flirting with William, which she was obviously not, but the tense atmosphere caused by all the touchy-feeliness (and the resultant gossip) deepened the rift between the brothers.

William is awkward: In fact, William’s rather awkward, even inhibited personality — an inheritance from his father — was baffling for the more spontaneous Meghan. A member of staff once recalled Meghan asking, “ ‘Why do William and Charles sound so serious all the time?’ She used to make jokes about Harry not having the same parents as William as, she insisted, ‘Harry isn’t pompous at all. He’s chill.’ ”

[From The Times]

The rewrite and reimagining of all of this is bonkers – it’s like a make-your-adventure soap opera where you have the same cast of characters and people just keep going back to the same timeline and trying to create new storylines for why everything fell apart. People were not talking about how Meghan was somehow too friendly or tactile with William – that wasn’t a conversation at the time, and Meghan and William only greeted each other warmly a handful of times in public. For the most part, William and Kate looked and acted absolutely miserable in Meghan’s presence, like they thought her woke Americanness was airborne and they might catch it. How much of this is William’s creepiness about and towards Meghan? Ugh. Also: Meghan didn’t expect to marry a “billionaire.” She clocked it right away, that Harry didn’t understand money and he also didn’t realize how his family profoundly neglected him.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, WENN, Cover Images.

This week, I covered a lovely piece in Marie Claire, about the Altadena Girls charity which was set up in the wake of the Southern California wildfires. The MC piece had interviews with the teenager who started the charity and her stepfather, and they both spoke about how much it meant to them to have the Duchess of Sussex’s support, not to mention the Archewell team helping them out behind-the-scenes. I wrote, in that post: “The criticism of Meghan for volunteering in her hometown during a huge natural disaster was always unhinged, and it never had any basis in reality. It was actually a test case of the virulence of Deranger hate – they exposed themselves as unreasonable people who lost their sh-t over absolutely anything involving Meghan.”

I maintain that the “negative reactions” to Meghan’s volunteerism and do-gooding have completely exposed the Derangers for being completely and utterly unreasonable. Well, they just keep exposing themselves. Now they’re mad because Meghan made an Instagram video thanking Billie Eilish for sending merchandise to a teenage wildfire victim. The Daily Mail’s headline: “Should Meghan Markle learn how to do a good deed without broadcasting it on social media? Fans point out neither Adam Levine nor Billie Eilish have shared how they ALSO helped the same 15-year-old wildfire victim.” We haven’t seen this kind of panicked Daily Mail headline since the Sussexes popped up in Jamaica unexpectedly last year.

Meghan Markle has drawn criticism for posting a ‘nauseatingly contrived’ and ‘actressy’ social media post which seemed to congratulate herself for helping a 15-year-old LA wildfire victim. The Duchess of Sussex, 43, uploaded a video to Instagram on Tuesday which detailed how she helped the girl after she met her when visiting the burnt-down area of Altadena a few weeks ago. Appearing candidly in jeans and minimal make-up, she described how the only thing the young music fan had been looking for in her destroyed home was a T-shirt from the singer Billie Eilish – but it had been turned to ‘ash’.

Meghan ended her short video with a big smile and the comment she was going to email the young fan’s mum to tell her the good news. But some commentators have questioned the motive of Meghan sharing her minor good deed on social media in the backdrop of such tragic effects.

A check of the Instagram pages of Billie Eilish, 23, Adam Levine, 45, and Behati Prinsloo, 36, revealed that none of those stars felt the need to share their efforts to help the young girl. However, Meghan’s decision to share her efforts with her 1.6million followers led to a slew of news articles around the world about her philanthropy.

Author and editor Alexander Larman wrote in The Spectator: ‘The disaster has attracted a small but vocal number of people who ostensibly have offered their time and resources to provide much-needed assistance – but in reality seem more interested in creating #content to share on their social media. Meghan Markle, predictably enough, belongs to that category.’

The writer later added: ‘Yet there is something so nauseatingly contrived, so fake – so actressy – about the little smiles to camera, the faux-excitement, the casual name-dropping of famous friends and, finally, the idea that some signed trinkets can in some way compensate for a truly epochal disaster. It screams of consumerism and fakery: both things, by now, that the Duchess has intimately associated herself with.’

Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Margaret Thatcher and foreign policy analyst, chimed in on Twitter/X: ‘Somehow Meghan Markle manages to turn the tragic LA wildfire disaster into a story about herself.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Just so we’re clear, when Harry and Meghan volunteered at an evacuation center and were only seen on camera in one local-news report, they were called “disaster tourists” and people had meltdowns because how dare H&M volunteer. Then Meghan volunteered with Altadena Girls and the CHARITY posted videos of Meghan, and she was once again criticized for… something something, making it all about Meghan. And now she’s being denigrated and insulted for making a simple thank-you video to Billie Eilish. If you listen to her story, you understand why she made the video – she clearly doesn’t have Billie’s contact info! She had to go through various third-parties to get a voice memo to Billie! The bit about “why did Meghan post this but Adam Levine didn’t??” Get a f–king life, OMG. They’re just totally crashing out over this, which shows that they’re hellbent on crashing out over every single thing she does and says.

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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instagram.