We should just sit back and relax and wait to see which British outlet is the first one to “break.” One of them has to do it – they can’t wait to do some more critical stories about Prince William, Kate and Kate’s mysterious health crisis. This might be the calm before the storm, where they’re laying it on thick about Prince William’s caretaking duties and how William will wait on Kate hand and foot:

Grant Harrold, a former royal butler, told the New York Post: “Like any family, it’s always wonderful when a loved one is able to come back home. I’m sure the kids are really excited to have Kate back. It will also be great for William, because when your partner or your loved one isn’t home, it leaves a void.”

Harrold, who served Charles for seven years when he was the Prince of Wales, believes William will no doubt be waiting on his wife “hand and foot.”

He said: “He’s a very caring, very loving kind of character, and I noticed that a lot when I spent time with them both back in the day. I’ve no doubt that wouldn’t have changed; William will make sure Kate is cared for and that she has a quick recovery.”

Harrold speculated that once Kate swiftly recovers, the couple will resume their joint royal duties, which they both enjoy. He mentioned that the pair does not have a large household at their Windsor residence, and William will primarily be responsible for helping Kate in getting back on her feet.

[From The Daily Express]

Is it Opposite World or something? Even in the most generous assessment of William’s character, he is not a nurturing man and he does not fuss over Kate. It doesn’t even look like he bothered to visit her more than once during her hospital stay. And please, even if you believe that Kate has gone back to Adelaide for her recuperation, it will not fall on William to do everything. Speaking of, the Mail says that Nanny Maria is about to become even more important:

Prince William will take on additional parenting responsibilities and has cleared his diary of official duties as she recovers, supporting his wife and only returning to public engagements once she is settled. The family are also being supported by their staff, including loyal, long-standing nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, whose role could be crucial in the coming weeks.

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline: ‘Kate has obviously had significant surgery. As a hands on mother when possible, she will need to rest as much as she can. This means she will rely on Maria a great deal in the coming weeks and maybe months. There is going to be very considerable speculation as to when William is able to resume royal duties. Obviously, especially given the temporary incapacity of King Charles, the sooner the better. This makes Maria’s contribution at this difficult time all the more invaluable.’

Mr Fitzwilliams said that Kate has embarked on what everyone hopes will be a full recovery, but added that there will be a long ‘convalescence’.

‘William will be with her and forgoing royal duties for as long as he feels it is necessary. He has always put his family first,’ he said. ‘Kate has been as hands on a mother as her role permits, but she has said that having a nanny is indispensable. Maria Teresa is, according to reports, extremely popular with the children but her training at Norland has meant she is ideal for whatever this role requires. She is of course a background figure, who is seen at some important royal occasions and who is indispensable at a time like this. Her training at the prestigious Norland College in Bath where she learnt a huge variety of skills and to work long hours if needed, will be particularly useful during the pivotal weeks of Catherine’s recovery.’

‘The coming weeks may be difficult and will be a test of this redoubtable figure, who is so trusted by the future King and Queen.’

[From The Daily Mail]

It feels like Fitzwilliams is telling William to get back to work and leave everything to the nanny? Interesting. The longer this goes on, the timeline gets more and more squishy too – Kate will be out until Easter, no, past Easter, well, we’ll definitely see her at Trooping the Colour in June. William was supposed to be out for a few weeks, and now it’s completely open-ended, just whenever he’s confident that Kate is being looked after? Hm.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Camilla Tominey at the Telegraph wrote a somewhat interesting – but mostly sycophantic – piece about King Charles’s workaholic habits. Charles has always been known as a voracious reader and someone who enjoys letter-writing and paperwork, but Tominey makes it sound like Charles spends 18-20 hours a day fussing with his papers and reading everything sent to him, and I can’t imagine that’s what he’s really like. Tominey also added something curious about how Charles basically has to be “staffed” 24-7 because no one knows when he’s going to need a note or letter sent out. No “5 am emails,” but 5 am phone calls and letters. Some highlights from “What does a typical day in the life of ‘workaholic’ King Charles look like?”

It’s a struggle to keep up with Charles: “The people who work for him are worried he is doing too much for a man of 75,” confirmed one well-placed insider. “It’s sometimes a struggle to keep up with him.”

He regularly works 18-hour days: No stranger to early morning starts and post-midnight finishes, the grandfather-of- five was once described by his sons Princes William and Harry as so obsessed with paperwork that he would regularly fall asleep at his desk. “He does need to slow down, this is a man who has dinner ridiculously late at night,” revealed Harry in a 2018 documentary to mark his father’s 70th birthday. “And then goes to his desk later that night and will fall asleep on his notes to the point where he’ll wake up with a piece of paper stuck to his face.” Even phone calls with his son and heir are scheduled, taking place every Sunday.

No cell phone or emails: Because the King does not own a mobile phone, he makes the calls on a landline. (If anyone ever needs to get hold of the monarch in an emergency, they invariably contact a member of his protection team, who are with him 24/7). [Later in the morning], the King will then typically sit at his desk and go through his non-red-box paperwork. Because he “doesn’t do emails”, he will either write to people by hand or dictate more formal letters to his “executive secretary” before signing them, with a fountain pen. As demonstrated during the signing of a visitors’ book at Northern Ireland’s Hillsborough Castle after the late Queen died in 2022, he prefers not to use a fountain pen when he can avoid it and instead is never without a felt tip, usually red, to annotate the reams of paperwork he pores over on a daily basis.

He doesn’t mind a stiff drink in the evening: He will then return to his desk to plough through more paperwork before eating a late supper, usually of fish (very seldom red meat) at around 9pm. He rarely drinks but if he does fancy a tipple, it’s usually a Dubonnet – the royal family’s favourite aperitif – or a dry martini, which he is said to mix “very generously” for visitors. While the Queen relaxes by watching television, the King prefers to read and will often return to his desk after dinner.

Late night calls & messages: Because he prefers to work late into the night, there is a special roster of evening executive secretaries so someone is always on duty to set up telephone calls, take notes and pass on messages. Often staff will wake up to receive correspondence that has been delivered in the small hours.

[From The Telegraph]

I can’t believe the royal press still screams and cries about Meghan’s “5 am texts/emails.” Remember that? Meghan has the audacity – the temerity! – to expect Kensington Palace staffers to complete tasks and she sent a few non-urgent reminder texts or what have you. She was ripped to shreds for it, and you would have thought those palace staffers had never met anyone who woke up early and expected them to work a full day. And then there’s Charles, who apparently works though the night and expects his staff to be on call 24-7 in case he needs a note sent at 1 am.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

In January 2019, during the Duchess of Sussex’s first pregnancy, she made a visit to her patronage, Smart Works. It was a great event for her – she met some of the women being helped by Smart Works and she helped style them for their job interviews. I think she sat in on some interview prep sessions, and she looked through the available clothes and accessories. Maybe that was when she came up with the idea for the Smart Works capsule collection, one of her wildly successful initiatives while she was being held hostage in the UK.

As you can see, Meghan was dressed in a simple black dress and trench coat. We heard, at the time, that her earrings were from Kimai, and they were a pair of artificial diamonds. What we didn’t know until now is the backstory of how Meghan came to wear those earrings. The story was told by the Belgian jewelry designers on the UK show Dragon’s Den, which is the UK’s version of Shark Tank. Small business owners go in and “pitch” for investment, and that’s when the Meghan story was revealed:

Meghan Markle accepted £1990 worth of diamond earrings from a female-founded jewellery business, the owners have revealed. The Duchess of Sussex, 42, was sent the jewellery by artificial diamond brand Kimai when she was still a working member of the Royal Family in 2019. The mother-of-two wore the brand’s Felicity earrings, which are sold separately for £995, when she visited the charity Smart Works’ headquarters in London.

It comes after Prince Harry revealed in his memoir that his wife would keep freebies sent to her at Kensington Palace and distribute them among her staff – despite the Royal Family usually sending back unsolicited gifts.

Earlier this month, Kimai’s founders Sidney Neuhaus and Jessica Warch appeared on Dragons’ Den where they boasted about the Duchess of Sussex wearing their designs. The founders – who were looking for a £250,000 investment for a three per cent equity stake in their business – revealed how the royal endorsement boosted their business, just a two months after they first launched.

They explained: ‘We’ve launched without investment, and then two months after our launch we got Meghan Markle to wear our pieces, which enabled us to grow the revenue significantly, and from there we raised $1.2 million.’

Steven Bartlett – who ended up investing in the business – questioned the duo on how they managed to get the Duchess of Sussex sporting their jewellery.

Sidney said: ‘Cold emails.’ Jessica then added: ‘We’re big believers in cold emails!’

Despite also peaking the interest of dragons Deborah Meade, Sara Davies and Peter Jones, the pair ended up choosing Steven. The entrepreneur said he was convinced to make an offer after seeing that Meghan Markle had worn their designs.

‘The moment you told be about hounding down Meghan Markle, you had me,’ he said.

[From The Daily Mail]

As you can see, the British papers are picking this up and running it as a negative, like HOW DARE Meghan accept freebies, blah blah blah. Kate accepts freebies too, it’s just that the British media doesn’t climb up her ass when she does it. Instead of talking about the bloody freebies, talk about how Meghan received a cold email about lab-grown diamonds and she gave such a huge boost to female entrepreneurs!! She gave them millions in free advertising just by wearing their earrings once.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Brittany Mahomes completely changed her wardrobe after watching Suits. [Just Jared]
Colman Domingo is the moment! [LaineyGossip]
Review of Love Lies Bleeding (the latest Kristen Stewart movie). [Pajiba]
Britney Spears’ “Selfish” tops the charts after Justin Timberlake dropped his new single with the same exact name. LMAO. [Hollywood Life]
Would you drink Emma Watson’s espresso martini? [OMG Blog]
The GOP accidentally admits there are more than two genders. [Jezebel]
Naomi Watts’ fashion tour through New York. [RCFA]
This print is too busy on Lily Gladstone. [Go Fug Yourself]
Jojo Siwa replaced Nigel Lythgoe on So You Think You Can Dance. [Seriously OMG]
Who is Southern Hospitality’s Joe Bradley? [Starcasm]
Take this quiz if you want to feel ancient. [Buzzfeed]

Last Friday, a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million. Carroll sued Donald Trump, decades after he raped her, and during a years-long campaign in which Trump defamed her. Even during the civil trial, Trump was still smearing her and defaming her on Truth Social. Worse yet, Trump’s unhinged supporters are targeting Carroll too. I was so pleased for Carroll’s victory but I didn’t have much confidence that she would ever get that money. It looks like her lawyer is on top of it though! E. Jean and her lawyer appeared on Good Morning America on Monday and there are some great quotes in here:

Three days after a jury awarded her over $83 million for Donald Trump’s repeated defamatory statements, columnist E. Jean Carroll vowed to use the money on “something Donald Trump hates.”

“If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent,” Carroll told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” suggesting she would create a “fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.”

Sitting feet from Trump in court for five days, Carroll described that her fears leading up to the trial about interacting with the former president washed away as soon as the trial began. “It was like he was like nothing, like an emperor without clothes,” Carroll said. “All my terror leading up to it, and there he is. He’s just something in a suit.”

Trump’s in-person attendance at the trial – after missing last year’s trial – briefly interrupted the proceedings, including when the former president muttered defamatory statements in earshot of the jury or walked out during the closing statement delivered by Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan. Kaplan, however, said Trump’s behavior only validated the central thesis of her case that Trump is “a bully who can’t follow the rules.”

“I definitely thought we got a few more million dollars immediately,” Kaplan said about Trump walking out of court during her closing statement. “I was like, well, that’s worth about $10 million.”

A few hours after Trump stormed out of court, the jury delivered their unanimous verdict and $83.3 million award. As the jury left the courtroom, Carroll and her lawyers held hands, exchanging smiles with some of the jurors. “It made me burst into tears because they met my eyes for the first time,” Carroll said about seeing the jurors.

Kaplan added that she is confident they will be able to collect the $83.3 million, explaining that Trump could either pay a bond or deposit the money in full until he appeals. “I’m pretty confident one way or the other. We might not get it right away. But one way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold. We will collect the judgment,” Kaplan said.

While Trump has not mentioned Carroll by name in the days since the verdict, Carroll said that she is not confident the former president will refrain from defaming her, and her lawyer said “all options are on the table” if Trump decides to defame her client again.

[From ABC News]

“One way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold.” As I said weeks ago, I want E. Jean Carroll to own g–damn Trump Tower after all of this. She can turn it into a center for immigration resources. She can turn it into a Planned Parenthood. While I love that she’s committed to giving the money away, I hope she keeps some of it for security, because she’s absolutely going to need it. Anyway, I love her lawyer’s confidence about getting the money! And it’s true, and it’s been true – the emperor has no clothes. He’s not some mastermind – he’s a racist moron and a serial sexual predator.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.

Well, this is a bit troubling. According to the World Health Organization, the measles are making a comeback. Thanks to vaccines, the US declared the measles eliminated in 2000. However, the highly contagious virus, which can have serious complications, is once again spreading in the States. There’s already an outbreak in Europe, which saw 30 times more cases in 2023 than in 2022. This has led to the UK Health Security Agency to declare a “national incident” due to the significant public health risk.

So far, clusters of American cases have been found in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. Why, you may ask, is a disease that we can prevent the spread of suddenly popping up all over the world? Yeah, you guessed it: declining levels of vaccination plus international travel. Contact tracing has determined at least one outbreak has come from an unvaccinated individual who traveled abroad to a country with an outbreak. It’s almost like the medical and science professionals who have been globally begging people to get vaccinated against preventable diseases were onto something.

Nearly a dozen cases of measles have been reported in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia in recent weeks, according to local health departments. International travel, coupled with declining global vaccination rates, is probably behind this spate of cases, experts say.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health has confirmed at least nine cases of measles over the past month after a person contracted the highly contagious virus outside the United States and exposed a parent and child at a children’s hospital, according to health department spokesperson James Garrow. That exposure then led to a Philadelphia day care outbreak that includes at least five children.

Health officials in Virginia are also warning people who recently traveled out of two D.C.-area airports – Dulles International Airport on January 3 and Reagan Washington National Airport on January 4 – of potential exposure to the virus after someone returning to the US from abroad traveled through Northern Virginia.
Additionally, a single case of measles has been confirmed in “an unvaccinated resident of the metro Atlanta area,” the Georgia Department of Public Health announced Thursday.

“The individual was exposed to measles while traveling out of the country,” a news release said. “DPH is working to identify anyone who may have had contact with the individual while they were infectious.”

It’s not only the United States. In the UK, a measles outbreak continues to widen: There have been 216 confirmed cases and 103 probable cases reported since October. The UK Health Security Agency has declared a national incident to signal the growing public health risk.

“It’s always concerning when we have a case of measles because of the probability that it’s going to spread to other individuals,” said Dr. Thomas Murray, a professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine who focuses on infectious diseases and global health.

“About 90% of susceptible people who are exposed will come down with signs and symptoms of the disease, so it’s very contagious.”

[From CNN]

According to the CDC, 92% of US children have been vaccinated against measles via the MMR vaccine, which is shy of the national target of 95%. It’s very frustrating to have the tools available to prevent harmful viruses like the measles from spreading, yet not be able to stop people from believing misinformation despite the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Since 2020, I have unfriended and muted a lot of former high school classmates, a couple of neighbors, and a handful of family members, all who suddenly believe that all vaccines, even the ones they themselves have gotten, were harmful and/or the government’s way of controlling us. At least eight of the Pennsylvania cases were in unvaccinated children, and several have resulted in hospitalization. Georgia’s cases involved unvaccinated individuals as well. It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t know how to stop it or what we do to get back on track, but something needs to give. I really hope all of the children affected by this outbreak make a quick and full recovery. This is also a really good reminder for us sane folk out here that for all of our nationalism and individualism, we really are all connected and contagious diseases know no boundaries.

Photos credit: Oleksandr Latkun / ImageBROKER / Avalon and CDC via Unsplash

While I’m worried about the Princess of Wales’s health and status and I genuinely hope she’s okay, it’s absolutely riveting to watch Buckingham Palace box in Kensington Palace. KP did the most to try to convince everyone that William was visiting Kate in the London Clinic and he just wasn’t being photographed. Then Camilla made it abundantly clear that photographers were outside the hospital as she repeatedly visited King Charles this weekend, drawing attention to William’s absence. Suddenly today, KP then announced that Kate had been discharged from the hospital and she had already returned home to Adelaide Cottage. Rebecca English at the Mail even underlined the fact that KP was telling her that Kate left the hospital TODAY. No photos, no videos, nothing. Then, hours later, King Charles was discharged from the same hospital – and he made sure the photographers waiting outside got plenty of pics. Wow.

King Charles III smiled and waved as was discharged from hospital today, three days after undergoing a successful procedure for an enlarged prostate.

Charles walked out of The London Clinic in Marylebone with Queen Camilla by his side following three nights under observation after being admitted last Friday morning at about 9am.

The King was twice visited by Queen Camilla yesterday, the third and fourth times she has been to see him at the private hospital since they arrived.

Camilla smiled as she arrived by car at midday yesterday, leaving again just over three hours later. She returned between 6pm and 7pm and was smiling as she left.

It is the same hospital where the Princess of Wales is being cared for after abdominal surgery on January 16. Kate today entered the 14th day of her hospital stay and was visited by her father-in-law Charles last Friday ahead of his operation.

[From The Daily Mail]

The Mail is pointing out that they’re perfectly capable of tracking the movements, arrivals and departures of the royals as they come and go from the London Clinic. Charles and Camilla also want to have it underlined – while Charles stayed in the hospital one more night than they were expecting, everything is fine and he’s back on his feet and there’s nothing to hide. Unlike some people.

And just to confirm, the princess left hospital today.

— Rebecca English (@RE_DailyMail) January 29, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

In case you’re wondering how Prince William is doing these days with his wife’s weeks-long hospitalization, surgery and projected months-long recovery, the answer is “fine.” We actually haven’t seen much of William in January, and he’s only been photographed once outside the London Clinic. Reportedly, those in the Berkshire/Windsor community believe he will not be “fazed” at all:

Prince William ‘won’t be fazed’ by parenting Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis while the Princess of Wales recovers from her surgery, an insider has claimed. The Prince of Wales, 41, is said to be a ‘hands-on’ father and is regularly seen dropping off and picking up his children at Lambrook School in Berkshire.

Speaking to HELLO!, an insider has claimed that the news of Kate’s surgery had ‘shocked’ the ‘close knit’ community of parents. They said: ‘He is a regular at the school gate and events and he’s very hands-on as a dad, so being in charge while Kate is away won’t faze him. They often do things as a full family unit and he’s very confident looking after the kids.’

On top of this, the source said the parents at Lambrook will ‘rally around [William] to offer any help they can’ in coming weeks.

[From The Daily Mail]

Sure. I actually believe that during Kate’s hospitalization, William and Nanny Maria probably have most things covered when it comes to the kids. Still, it’s weird that this is the message seemingly coming out of KP – everything’s fine, William has it covered, he’s not fazed in the least. Especially since there’s also a movement to make it sound like Kate’s absence will be felt dramatically all across the UK.

Kate Middleton’s absence from royal life has been “felt so hugely” that she’s now seen as an “irreplaceable” member of the family. According to brand and PR expert Denise Palmer-Davies, Kate’s stint in hospital has only cemented her place in the family and shown her to be “the most valuable jewel in the crown.”

Denise, director of Borne Media, told Fabulous: “Kate’s commitment and dedication to royal life is unquestionable, so her absence will be felt so hugely. It would be impossible for anyone else to step into her shoes during this time because there isn’t anyone who can do what she does. She is irreplaceable. Her knowledge and dedication to early years, and her work in shaping our future generation, is so unique to her and such a personal project that there isn’t another family member who can take the reins or slip into that role.

“Kate also has this incredible aura – much like her late mother in law, Princess Diana – that cannot be replicated. She has always been held in high regard by the King, and the late Queen, but I think now senior members are really feeling it – they are missing the most valuable jewel in the crown.”

Talk TV’s royal editor Sarah Hewson agrees, saying her break from royal life “highlights how central she is in the family.”

She said: “She’s one of its most popular members, she certainly is the most photographed. But it’s not about the number of engagements that she does, it’s about the impact that they have, and that she’s able to have, because when she does something, it gets noticed. As the late Queen said ‘We need to be seen to be believed’ so when Kate isn’t there, you really do notice it. She brings the star dust, and that’s really essential to a monarchy that needs to reach out to a younger generation. They are certainly missing her sparkle.”

Sarah added that had “things had been handled differently” by Prince Harry and Prince William, Harry and Meghan could have stepped up into Kate’s shoes.

“I think they could have been invaluable,” Sarah said. “They could have helped to relieve some of the burden and sprinkled the stardust where it’s needed.’

[From The Sun]

Kate is the jewel in the crown, the most valuable royal, the most important asset to the monarchy, and also William is doing fine without Kate around and he barely visiting her. Who is actually making the calls at Kensington Palace? I’m flabbergasted by the weeks of extremely strange messaging from William’s office. Also: all of this is going down before William hired a CEO to take over Kensington Palace. I keep going back and forth about whether this is just another instance where “royals can’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag” or something else entirely.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

I think Austin Butler must frame the events in his life as BE and AE — Before Elvis and After Elvis. And look, I appreciate that he’s been working for decades and this was his big break. Even so, Austin has been pretty extra in his interviews, in whichever accent he was donning at the time. His approach was straight out of The Lady Gaga School of Method Acting & Oscar Campaigning™. But now it’s a new year, and Austin has a new prestige project to promote, Masters of the Air on Apple TV+, so he can put all the Elvis accent talk behind— What’s that now? He’s still talking about the accent? Oh for the love of Tupelo…

Austin Butler got caught in an Elvis Presley trap.

The Elvis actor revealed that he needed some professional help to get rid of the music legend’s accent before shooting his new TV show, Masters of the Air, premiering on Apple TV+ Jan. 26.

“I had a dialect coach just to help me not sound like Elvis,” Butler admitted in a Jan. 24 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “It was a whole thing.”

In fact, the Golden Globe winner had to put in more work than simply dropping the accent, considering he practiced method acting for three years to prepare for his titular role in the 2022 Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic.

“I was just trying to remember who I was,” Butler continued. “I was trying to remember what I liked to do. All I thought about was Elvis for three years.”

Butler credited his Elvis costar Tom Hanks with convincing him to dive head-first into playing Major Gale Cleven in Masters of the Air, a World War II drama series that also stars Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan.

“I was having dinner with Tom Hanks in Australia,” the 32-year-old recalled. “He was sort of joking, saying, ‘You’re gonna lose your mind when you finish this three years of your life focused on this one thing. You’re gonna have to find something else to jump right into afterward.”

Hanks, who’s a producer on Masters of the Air, already had the Apple TV+ show in the works.

“I started a week after,” the Dune: Part Two actor said. “I had a week off after Elvis. It was almost too fast.”

Butler’s struggle to shake off his Elvis character has drawn a lot of attention from fans, but the Carrie Diaries star doesn’t let the scrutiny get to him.

“If I was trying to sound like Elvis, I would sound very different right now,” he told the Los Angeles Times in January 2022. “I think it’s sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing.”

[From E! News]

“I think it’s sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing.” Oh really, that’s how you want to play it, Mr. Butler? Ok then, at this point I need a chart, a graph, some kind of visual aid to assist in the timeline of his accent. Just one year ago Austin was denying he was still doing the accent, then walked it back when the rest of the world was like, “Dude, we have ears.” And now he’s saying that he engaged professional help to unlearn the accent in the one week he had off between finishing Elvis and starting Masters of the Air, which the interwebs tell me happened in 2021. Poor boy, I think he really is lost in his own narrative. And I find it hilarious that he’s still plowing full steam ahead with talking about his uber method acting. “I was just trying to remember who I was,” was particularly precious, especially since only a few months ago he was praising Tom Hardy for knowing how to drop into character during filming, instead of maintaining it all the time.

Last note: a shout out to the E! News reporter who, out of everything Academy Award nominee Austin Butler has been in, identified him as the “Carrie Diaries star.” That one had me chuckling, uh huh uh huh.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Lee Floyd / Avalon, JPI Studios / Avalon and Getty

Jonny Lee Miller is currently in London, doing a West End play called A Mirror. The play has gotten great reviews and everyone’s like “wow, Jonny should do more stage work.” It’s also a little bit funny to see JLM do so much promotion for this play, much more than he did for The Crown (where he played John Major). Jonny’s latest interview in the Independent is actually the first time he’s addressed Angelina Jolie’s comments that she told Jonny about Harvey Weinstein assaulting her back in the 1990s. Jolie has said, in a couple of interviews, that after Weinstein assaulted her, she told Jonny and some other industry people to stay away from Weinstein.. In 2021, Jolie told the Guardian: “It was beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape. I stayed away and warned people about him. I remember telling Jonny, my first husband, who was great about it, to spread the word to other guys – don’t let girls go alone with him. I was asked to do The Aviator, but I said no because he was involved. I never associated or worked with him again. It was hard for me when Brad did.” Jonny finally spoke about it and he’s also speaking about his twelfth year of sobriety. Some highlights:

He was a nightmare in his 20s: “I was a nightmare! I got sent on all these meetings and auditions, and I was just not good at any of it. God, I had a very embarrassing audition for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. I didn’t get that I was supposed to be, like, prepared about Shakespeare…. It still makes me cringe. It’s just the way it went down. But here we are. F*** it! It’s whatever, man.”

He flailed around while his friends (Jude Law, Ewan McGregor) became movie stars: “I was young and foolish. I suppose I had a certain amount of arrogance, where I was like… ‘This is bulls***!’ So I ran away from my life and hid in LA for a couple of years, not taking advantage of career opportunities. But that’s just how life is sometimes. I wasn’t really smart about stuff.”

On Angelina Jolie telling him about Harvey Weinstein: “My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember feeling fury. I actually wanted to be more proactive about it, but it was 100 per cent her decision and you have to swallow your male bulls***. I was gonna hire someone to f***ing…” He trails off. “But I didn’t. I had some connections.” I laugh, nervously. Miller does not. And Jolie told him not to? “Yeah. Because it would mean it becomes about you, right? And you wanting to prove how much you care – ‘No one’s going to f***ing do that to my people.’ But what you need to do is listen to your partner. Amazingly, that was the one thing I was able to get right. You know, I was raised by women. I have three sisters. And [Jolie] is a very smart lady. She knows what’s best for her.”

Living with Jude Law in the early days. He says he was the messier of the two – he remembers Law being an early “nester”, someone stylish and resourceful, while he was more scatterbrained. When Miller got Hackers and the pair moved to nicer digs in Primrose Hill, it was Law who carefully boxed up all of his belongings for him while he was overseas filming.

He’s never felt particularly creative. “I’m imaginative, but I’m not creative. My sisters are creative. They can draw and paint. But I don’t, and can’t, and don’t have a desire to. Acting is more observational, I suppose. You’re fulfilling someone else’s vision, so you’re just a small part of it.”

Coparenting his 15-year-old son Buster with his ex Michele Hicks. “Again, it comes back to swallowing your pride. You’ve got to remember who the most important person in any given situation is.” He’s relieved that his son appears to have absolutely no interest in acting. “I think that might be quite healthy. I feel like wanting to express yourself when you’re little might be to do with things not being great at home. You’re wanting to be heard. And mine and Michele’s whole f***ing vibe is that he’s heard.”

He’s more than 12 years sober: During a podcast appearance in December, he said he had spent much of the aftermath of Trainspotting in a haze: he was addicted to heroin for several years, before replacing it with alcohol and cocaine. In 2012, he got sober. “I’d never talked about it for a number of reasons, partly out of worry about getting insured for work. But f*** that, you know? You never know who needs to hear a positive story.” He tells me he’s reluctant to go into too much detail about his struggles today, having already “spilled his guts” on the aforementioned podcast. “But getting sober was the best thing I’ve ever done. Oddly, Elementary came along when I’d been sober for about six months. And honestly it was a gift.”

[From The Independent]

Before his promotion for this play, I honestly didn’t know that he had spent years addicted to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, nor did I realize that he had started talking about his sobriety in recent months. It adds another layer to his performance and work in Elementary, which is (IMO) one of the best television shows about addiction and recovery, all of it beautifully and movingly acted by JLM. As for what he says about Jolie and Weinstein… from what Jolie has said, she really appreciated the fact that Jonny listened to her and believed her. I wonder if she knew that Jonny had a moment where he was going to organize a hit on Weinstein. And the way he still talks about Angie, never a bad word, full of praise – sob, they need to get back together.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.