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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instagram.

The trailer for Jurassic World: Rebirth is here, starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali & Jonathan Bailey. Interesting… [Just Jared]
Does anyone care about the new Fantastic Four? [LaineyGossip]
What’s the best bit of physical comedy in Friends? [Pajiba]
This Tony Ward collection is giving Daytime Emmys. [Go Fug Yourself]
The teaser for M3GAN 2.0 – I will watch this. [OMG Blog]
Renee Zellweger wore Tamara Ralph. [RCFA]
Build-a-Bear After Dark? [Seriously OMG]
A Summer House feud. [Starcasm]
All about Final Destination Bloodlines. [Hollywood Life]
What should people stock up on grocery-wise? [Buzzfeed]

It’s just so funny to me that the Princess of Wales apparently threw a fit about how no one should talk about her style anymore, and then proceeded to wear one of her worst looks in years. I can’t get over this assy ensemble from Kate – the stringy, too-long hair, the obvious “bump-it” wiglet/fall, the catastrophic pleated trousers, the misshapen blazer. She was absolutely daring us to talk sh-t! Kate also has this weird thing where, when she knows she’s going to be around kids, she wears really dark colors. When visiting the 9/11 Memorial, she wore hot pink – when visiting a school, she wore all-black. I don’t get it. But anyway, we’re not supposed to talk about her style anymore, but I just had a big relapse. As for the substance of Kate’s big keen bus ride and museum visit, obviously People Magazine makes it sound like Kate deserves canonization for this.

Kate Middleton may have shared a glimpse into family road trips with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis during her latest royal outing. The Princess of Wales, 43, made a surprise arrival at the National Portrait Gallery on Feb. 4, stepping off the bus with schoolchildren and teachers for their field trip to the London art gallery.

Alix Ascough, the executive head of All Souls Church of England Primary School in London, tells PEOPLE that Princess Kate “sat with the children on the coach and chatted with them.” At one point, the royal took part in a classic road trip game: I Spy.

“She was so relaxed and animated, and it just felt really natural,” Ascough says. “We’ll never have another school trip like that, will we?”

When they arrived at the National Portrait Gallery, Kate walked in holding the hand of a student named Grace. Inside, the group visited an interactive trail that used the artwork to explore how faces can express feelings and emotions. The project is part of the new Shaping Us Framework from The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, the Princess of Wales’ initiative to give children the best possible start to life.

Ascough tells PEOPLE, “For the children, it was just so magical. It was an awe and wonder moment. They’ve been doing lots of artwork at school, so for them to be able to that within the gallery with the princess was magical. It’s what memories are made of.”

Liz Smith, director of learning and engagement at the National Portrait Gallery, tells PEOPLE that the outing was “a regular school trip with a very special person on the bus. That was quite deliberate. It’s planned to be for children, and it can lose that magic if you have that formal launch.” At the end of the interactive trail, Princess Kate helped the children create self-portraits in a “cozy nook” that Smith calls “our storytelling space… They all sat and drew and posted them into a magical cabinet where they disappeared. We might be revealing some of them.”

Princess Kate was “naturally nurturing and was listening and integrated with the group. She was one of the school party, and there was no official presentation. It was as if she was one of the mums, one of the helpers. And, as you are on a school trip, you’re learning as you’re walking and making sense of the environment. It was a real treat.”

[From People]

“A regular school trip with a very special person on the bus. That was quite deliberate. It’s planned to be for children, and it can lose that magic if you have that formal launch…” This makes me wonder how this outing came together. It feels like the National Portrait Gallery came to their royal patron (Kate) and said: hey, we’ve helped organize this field trip for our new interactive exhibition, maybe Kate would like to do something around it? Everyone is being pretty careful to NOT give Kate credit for coming up with the adventure. In fact, they’re making sure it sounds like Kate was added at the last minute and that she didn’t organize any of it. I feel like this is what most of Kate’s outings are like though – it’s never Kate being proactive and putting together events or launches. It’s her staffers figuring out these simple, uncomplicated childlike photo-ops for her.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

For eight-plus years, a lot of British people have been really mad that Prince Harry isn’t a drunk screwup. They had his life planned out – he was going to be the Princess Margaret of his royal generation, the charismatic alcoholic whose tragic life would make his sibling look better by comparison. They’re still SO mad that Harry turned his life around in his 30s, that he no longer falls out of nightclubs, that he found the love of his life and became a stable family man. Speaking of, yet another “former friend” has sh-t to say about Harry cutting people out of his life when he met Meghan. This is from comedian-actor Jack Whitehall:

Prince Harry allegedly ended his close friendship with comedian Jack Whitehall when the Duke of Sussex started dating Meghan Markle.

“I’ve come into contact with a couple of [the royals] in the past. I was quite good friends with Harry back in the day. Pre-Meghan, when he was a terror,” Whitehall dished on Monday’s episode of the “Jase & Lauren” podcast. The “Bad Education” star, 36, was asked if it was true that the Invictus Games founder “dropped his mates” when he met Markle, to which Whitehall said, “Yeah.”

Whitehall noted that he wasn’t present for the infamous night when Harry played strip billiards with showgirls in Las Vegas, but the actor said he “had a few nights out with him.”

“I mean, I wasn’t, I wouldn’t say, part of the inner circle, to go back to a Vegas analogy,” Whitehall said. “But no, I had a few nights out with him when he was quite fun.”

Whitehall made sure to mention that like Harry, he has also “retired” from his wild party days.

“There’s still a demon inside me,” Whitehall joked. “There [is] definitely a little bit more negotiating and [I’ve] cashed out at the bank of mutual resentment. I just sent my wife away for a girls’ weekend — I’m like, ‘Take two nights babe,’ ‘Cause I know there’s a potential boys’ weekend coming up.”

Whitehall and Harry have been spotted hanging out over the years and were even photographed having a joyful interaction at the Royal Variety Performance at London’s Albert Hall in 2015. The BetterUp chief impact officer, 40, started dating the “Suits” alum, 43, a year later and the couple tied the knot in 2018.

[From Page Six]

I’ll give Whitehall some credit – he doesn’t sound as peeved and resentful as most of Harry’s “former friends,” the same ones who have cried for years that Harry isn’t drunk and unlucky in love. It sounds like Harry and Jack partied together a few times and Jack was easily culled from the group soon enough. Did Jack even go to Harry’s wedding? I don’t think so. So, yeah, they were more like social acquaintances.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Anna Wintour went to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday for a special investiture conducted by King Charles himself. In a 2023 honors list, Wintour was made a Companion of Honour for her services to fashion. For the palace appearance, Wintour went with a pale grey suit by McQueen, paired with an amethyst necklace which has some royal history. According to People Mag, the amethysts once belonged to Queen Mary (King Charles’s great-grandmother), and it’s likely that Wintour bought the amethysts or the necklace itself at auction. She’s owned the necklace for years and she wears it to many big events.

While Wintour only met with the king yesterday, she was asked about the sus report that she had offered an American/global Vogue cover to the Princess of Wales. The Mail’s initial story was weird though, and it definitely seemed like Kate was the one offering herself to Wintour. Given that the report was followed by Kensington Palace’s announcement that they would no longer give fashion IDs for Kate (because “substance over style”), it’s all been very weird messaging from Team Keen. Well, Wintour was asked about it and this is what happened:

Dame Anna Wintour offered a cryptic response today when questioned about rumours that the Princess of Wales had been offered global Vogue covers.

The fashion editor addressed the speculation with a smile during her visit to Buckingham Palace, where she received one of Britain’s highest honours.

“Yeah, I don’t know where those rumours have come from, do you?” Wintour said when asked about the reports during the investiture ceremony.

[From GB News]

Yeah, she’s not going to say anything to alienate the Windsors, especially when she’s standing in Buckingham Palace. If she made Kate an offer, Wintour would be cryptic about it too. But it also feels like Wintour is sort of pushing back, as in – don’t believe everything Kensington Palace briefs to the Daily Mail. As if the Mail would get that information exclusively, you know?

Fashion editor Dame Anna Wintour told the King she will not stop working as she removed her trademark sunglasses when she was honoured at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace pic.twitter.com/ScsfHipVwK

— PA Media (@PA) February 4, 2025

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

The Daily Beast’s Royalist columnist, Tom Sykes, has always had suspiciously good sources in Prince William’s camp. For years – although not in recent months, weirdly – the Royalist has had abundant sources sharing every little detail of William’s thoughts on Prince Harry, William’s thoughts on Harry’s work, William’s thoughts on how Harry is obviously desperate to come back to the UK to be William’s doormat, and William’s thoughts on how William fantasizes daily about punishing Harry for his many perceived transgressions. Now the Royalist magically has a source spilling their guts about NGN’s settlement with Prince Harry last month. Curious, isn’t it? Especially since NGN bought William’s silence (and probably a lot more) and William regularly hands exclusives to NGN to this day. According to these sources, NGN settled with Harry for £10 million and the bulk of the settlement money is going towards Harry’s legal fees. According to these sources, Harry got played. Yes, I’m sure someone in the Windsor clan wants to believe that.

Prince Harry received just a fraction of the reported £10 million ($12.5 million) settlement he reached with Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), with “75 percent” going towards his costs, and a smaller chunk to his co-defendant, Tom Watson, a source with knowledge of the matter has told The Daily Beast. Harry’s team has consistently emphasized that the “full and unequivocal” apology to Harry and his mother and NGN’s admission of criminality at the Sun were the critical factors in his decision.

Immediately after the trial, it was widely reported that Harry had walked away with an “eight-figure” settlement, suggesting he had received more than £10 million (around $12 million). While some reports noted that he would have to pay legal costs, some British media, notably that portion of it that tends to be hyper-critical of Harry, characterized the deal as Harry being bought off by the prospect of pocketing a handsome “profit.”

In fact, that is very far from the truth. The Daily Beast can now reveal that after costs, Harry could have received as little as £2 million ($2.5 million)—thought to be just a million pounds more than the sum his brother, Prince William, received from NGN in a secret 2020 deal to resolve his phone hacking claims.

A source with knowledge of the deal told The Daily Beast that “any sum being speculated on was a total sum and includes damages and costs for the two cases (Sussex and Watson) and a majority (in the region of 75%) of the total figure is provided to cover legal costs.”

Prince Harry and NGN both declined to comment. However, the revelation that Harry received a relatively paltry sum after costs may actually bolster the argument widely made by those close to him and his supporters: that what Harry really cared about was NGN’s admission of criminal activity at the Sun, which it has always denied. Sources sympathetic to Harry said that NGN’s admission of guilt was the pivotal factor in Harry accepting their offer and pointed to an article in the magazine Prospect, which said NGN’s settlement looked like “a desperate last-minute move by a publisher anxious to avoid a public trial of the claims.”

One legal source told The Daily Beast: “The amount of damages was actually settled a week before the case opened, what delayed it was the accountability issue. Harry wanted senior NGN executives who he alleged were involved in hacking and the cover up to be named but that was never going to happen. In the end what NGN did, which was a very clever piece of lawyering, was to admit to wrongdoing that was already widely known about, and not admit to the cover-up. Harry’s side has put together a file for the police about the cover-up but [a prosecution] is never going to happen because it was a long time ago and unlawful news gathering has now stopped. Millions of police hours have been spent on this and the police need to get on to ‘now’ problems —such as young men being radicalized in their bedrooms—as opposed to historic matters seen as basically affecting Prince Harry.”

[From The Daily Beast]

This makes zero sense – a legal source claims that Harry and NGN came to an agreement on the settlement amount a week earlier, and yet there was panic when the lawyers couldn’t get in touch with Harry on the day the trial was supposed to start? NGN made only a partial capitulation at the last minute – “a very clever piece of lawyering” – because they held all the power, huh? As opposed to everything we saw unfold in real time – NGN played chicken with the ginger prince and the prince didn’t blink. He was fully prepared to drag them to hell and back in the trial and NGN (the Murdochs) decided they needed to do everything they could to keep this sh-t from coming out in open court. No, this Daily Beast story is wishful thinking on the part of the British media complex and the Windsors. The over-emphasis on William’s settlement and how Harry effectively only got double what William got… I recognize those fingerprints. I’ve seen this framing before.

Also: I still believe the reporting from that week that it was likely that any settlement would have NGN paying Harry’s legal bills separately from the settlement. I also don’t believe that NGN successfully low-balled Harry, for what it’s worth.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.