Almost every marriage exhibited on a Real Housewife franchise ends in divorce, but there were always a handful of couples who managed to break the curse. People thought Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky were one of those couples. Kyle has been on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills since 2010. She had one of the more stable marriages. But it’s over… after 27 years together. The exclusive came out during the Independence Day holiday here in America, so there was an attempt to bury the news.

Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky have separated after 27 years of marriage, PEOPLE confirms. A source close to the pair tells PEOPLE: “Kyle and Mauricio have been separated for a while now but are still living under the same roof. They remain amicable as they figure out what’s next for them and their family.”

Richards, 54, first met Umansky, 53, at a nightclub in 1994. At the time, Richards was divorced from her first husband Guraish Aldjufrie, with whom she had daughter Farrah Brittany (née Aldjufrie), 34.

After getting engaged later that year, the couple tied the knot in January 1996 and went on to welcome three daughters: Alexia, 27, Sophia, 23 and Portia, 15.

In 2010, their family was officially introduced to the public when The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills premiered on Bravo. As Richards became a mainstay on the reality show for the last 12 seasons, the pair frequently insisted to fans that they were seeing their real relationship play out on the show.

“We’re the same, with or without cameras. We’re just super real and we know each other and we’re real,” Umansky told PEOPLE in March 2013. “We don’t have any secrets to hide. That’s one thing we talked about, the skeletons in the closet, and we can handle our worst skeletons.”

[From People]

Notably, Mauricio made a point of posting social media photos on the Fourth of July showing that they were spending the holiday together with their children. This seems less like a “reality show curse” and more like two people who grew apart over time, especially with most of their kids out of the house. Portia is their only minor child now. Anyway, the RHOBH fans were really shaken up by this news.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mauricio (Mau) (@mumansky18)

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, IG.

Here are some photos of Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez and Violet Affleck on the Fourth of July. There’s always at least one major “industry party” on Independence Day, and this year Michael Rubin hosted it. The dress code was “all white,” which… eh. It feels very early-aughts, doing an all-white dress code for a summer party. I remember those Hamptons parties with all-white dress codes. Still, Bennifer was game and so was Violet.

Violet is fully her mother’s daughter – I always do a double-take whenever I see photos of her, because it inevitably looks like Jennifer Garner and J.Lo are hanging out. I wonder if J.Lo does the same double-take. Violet not only paired her white dress with pigtails, she also wore a mask at the party. She’s 17 years old and she’s still like “actually, I don’t want to catch anything.” The only other Hollywood type I’ve seen wearing masks still, to this day, is Leo DiCaprio (and I mostly think that’s about the paparazzi).

Speaking of Leo, Ben and J.Lo are both Leos, with Jennifer’s birthday coming up on July 24th and Ben’s birthday coming up on August 15. Will they do another birthday trip in Europe? Will they get a yacht? I hope so. There are also persistent rumors that Ben and Jen will do a vow renewal this summer for their one-year anniversary. I hope not – I hope they just go on a big birthday/anniversary trip.

Here’s one of Michael Rubin’s IGs about his party, and you can see a great photo of the Affleck-Lopez fam. Beyonce was there!! So were Kim Kardashian, Tom Brady, Kim Kardashian and dozens of A-listers.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Rubin (@michaelrubin)

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

The Princess of Wales made a surprise appearance at Wimbledon on Tuesday, Independence Day here in America. While she skipped last year’s Wimbledon Centenary event last year – in which Roger Federer participated – she didn’t skip this year’s Wimbledon salute to Federer, who only retired from tennis about nine months ago. Kate and Roger are “friends” and of course Kate wanted to hang out with a handsome athlete, even if Roger’s wife Mirka was there too. Sidenote: in case you’re wondering, Wimbledon originally planned to do a salute to Federer and Serena Williams, two of their biggest champions, but Serena’s pregnancy is so far along, she couldn’t travel to the All-England Club. The Federer salute ended up being a brief video and a standing ovation as he entered the Royal Box and that’s about it. What was especially nice was that Federer hung around and watched the matches on Centre Court. I have expected him to send some coaching signals to Andy Murray from the Royal Box.

Before Kate turned up on Centre Court, she went out to one of the smaller outdoor courts to watch British player Katie Boulter. Boulter’s match – and all of the matches on the uncovered courts – were suspended because of all the rain in England this week. Still, it’s nice that Kate has made a point of going to matches on some of the smaller courts at Wimbledon. This isn’t the first time.

As for Kate’s outfit, it was so bad, omg. She did an “homage” to one of Princess Diana’s ‘80s suits – a £1,950 mint-green Balmain blazer with large white buttons and white lapels, paired with a white pleated skirt and white heels. Her purse was Mulberry (in white). The Wimbledon Wiglet was slapped on too. I count 16 buttons on that tragic blazer. It’s so sad – while Kate’s Wimbledon style was never my jam, she used to wear relatively simple summer dresses. Now she feels the need to wear button-slathered ‘80s homages to Diana. Sigh.

A lot of people were trying to make “Roger and Kate were flirting with each other” into a thing. Even the Daily Mail was like “Kate was THRILLED to catch up with Roger, but his wife doesn’t look quite as happy.” It’s like… Kate always has to be in conflict with whichever woman is around. From what I saw during the cutaways, Kate was talking (mumbling) a lot to Roger and Mirka. Roger was mostly focused on the tennis. Roger also adores his wife Mirka.

Buttons https://t.co/vK6LBHWsBb

— Kaiser@Celebitchy (@KaiseratCB) July 4, 2023

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SAG-AFTRA (@sagaftra)

Last Friday June 30 was a big deadline in Hollywood–it was when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) contract would expire. The million dollar question was whether the actors would join the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on strike. The WGA has been on strike since early May seeking better wages, protections against AI and a serious revision on the distribution of streaming residuals. As deals stand now, the big networks, studios and streamers–represented in negotiations by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)–make a grossly unfair cut of the residuals. So the WGA took the first bold move to strike against AMPTP knowing that negotiations between AMPTP and the directors (DGA) and actors guilds were to follow, both with June 30 deadlines and with largely the same issues to be redressed. The DGA reached a deal with AMPTP in early June that they ratified a couple weeks ago. It all came down to the actors. With stakes high, it was a bit of a let down–purely in terms of dramatic tension–when we learned last Friday that an extension period was agreed to, meaning no deal reached but also no strike… yet:

Hollywood actors will stay on the job–for now.

After a month of tense negotiations between Hollywood actors’ union and the major studios, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will continue talking, the guild announced late Friday, averting a strike, at least for 12 more days.

The contract, which was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. PDT Friday, will now expire on July 12 at the same time, the actors union and the studios and networks group said in a joint statement. “The parties will continue to negotiate under a mutually agreed upon media blackout.” The new deadline falls just hours after TV’s Emmy Awards announce nominations for this year’s ceremony.

There is a lot at stake in the “seminal” negotiations, so-called by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher. The rise of streaming services, the advent of artificial intelligence technology and the greater economic headwinds have changed how actors are paid. Actors want increased base compensation, which they say has been undercut by inflation and the streaming ecosystem, regulated use of artificial intelligence, better benefit plans and money for “self-taped auditions”–the cost of which used to be the responsibility of casting and production.

Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland sent a hopeful message to the membership over the weekend about the talks. It was quickly followed Wednesday by an open letter from over 1,000 SAG members to the leadership. The letter, signed by names as big as Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, expressed the membership’s sincere willingness to strike if they were not able to achieve all their demands in a new contract.

The entertainment industry is already mostly shut down after the Writers Guild of America went on strike May 2. Actors shared many of the same concerns and demands as the writers, including regulating AI and establishing an updated pay scale for work on streaming content. It is possible a deal with SAG could move the needle in negotiations between the AMPTP and the WGA. The AMPTP also reached a deal with the Directors Guild of America that was ratified by its membership June 24.

Members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were last on strike at the same time in 1988, when commercial actors and writers were both on the picket line. Hollywood actors and writers were also both on strike in 1960. Although many Hollywood film and TV sets are already shut down without writers, losing actors will bring worldwide production to a standstill, delaying series including HBO’s “House of the Dragon” and films such as “Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part Two.” A strike could also delay or cancel the Emmy Awards, currently scheduled for September, and depress the lineup at San Diego Comic-Con in July, usually an event full of A-list Hollywood actors, writers and directors.

[From USA Today]

OK I have to get this out of the way first: somehow in the weeks of tracking this story I missed the fact that SAG’s chief negotiator was named Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. That’s not a law firm, that is one man’s name! How can they lose with that name behind them?!

Moving on, my read on this is that SAG was ready to strike so AMPTP moved to avert by agreeing to an extension (just not to better terms, of course). The actors are undeniably the most visible group, and we already knew that the studios have been worried about summer movies being disrupted by actors joining the strike. But what comes after summer? Fall, when studios launch award season campaigns at film festivals and release their prestige projects. Whether it’s now or in a couple months, the studios face losing a lot of money if they don’t settle with SAG and WGA (and don’t forget that virtually no new work is in production due to the writers strike). My point is that moving to stall now is just delaying the inevitable, which is an overdue reckoning on revenue in the age of streaming, as well putting in protections now against AI taking away jobs from artists. Mark your calendars for July 12.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by John Lyne-Pirkis (@diary.of.an.actor)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SAG-AFTRA (@sagaftra)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SAG-AFTRA (@sagaftra)

The second Dune 2 trailer is so good. [OMG Blog]
Alicia Vikander wore Louis Vuitton to a film festival. [RCFA]
Jennifer Lawrence went on Chicken Shop Date. [Egotastic]
Michael K’s last Dlisted post. Sob. [Dlisted]
The summer of Timothy Olyphant. [LaineyGossip]
Recap of Secret Invasion Ep. 2. [Pajiba]
I love Stephanie Hsu but her style… oh no. [Go Fug Yourself]
Mark Harmon is cowriting a book about the real NCIS. [Just Jared]
Not Rihanna wearing a “use a condom” t-shirt. [Seriously OMG]
Meet the woman trying to keep people out of jail in a post-Roe country. [Jezebel]
Starbucks is offering some new seasonal beverages. [Buzzfeed]
Dolly Parton’s AI concerns. [Towleroad]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by DUNE (@dunemovie)

In June, Sarah Ferguson was diagnosed with breast cancer, and a single mastectomy was performed. The news was only announced after the surgery, and Fergie is apparently recovering at Royal Lodge, where she has her own suite of rooms in the Royal Windsor estate her ex-husband leases. I’ve been curious why we haven’t heard any PR puff pieces about how Prince Andrew is worried sick and how he’s looking after his ex-wife. I guess they can’t even say that because it’s clear that Andrew isn’t doing anything – it’s fallen on Princess Eugenie to help her mom. Meanwhile, King Charles has apparently “shelved” the talk of evicting the Yorks from Royal Lodge.

Brave Sarah Ferguson has told friends she feels “very lucky to be alive” after a gruelling eight-hour breast cancer operation, we can reveal today. The Duchess of York, 63, is said to be in good spirits and recovering well after spending four days in intensive care in hospital following her exhausting ordeal. It is believed mum-of-two Fergie needed round-the-clock monitoring after the anaesthetic took its toll during what friends confirmed was “successful” surgery. She has returned home following the procedure at King Edward VII’s Hospital in Marylebone, central London, in which a breast was removed and reconstructed.

Friends say daughter Eugenie, 33, has “all but moved in” to Royal Lodge in Windsor, Berks, to look after her, while older child Beatrice, 34, has been “constantly on the phone”. Fergie is also being supported by former husband Prince Andrew, 63.

A palace insider said that plans for the family to move into nearby Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s former home, have been “quietly shelved” for now. King Charles, meanwhile, has written to his former sister-in-law to offer his “sincere wishes for a speedy recovery”.

Surgeon Christine Choy carried out the single mastectomy while colleague Stuart James reconstructed the breast using fat from Fergie’s stomach. A friend of the duchess said: “The surgery took getting on for eight hours and was more involved than people think. Today, the message she wants to get out is that she’s very grateful and she feels very lucky to be alive. She wants to thank the two incredible surgeons Christine Choy and Stuart James who saved her life and all the medical team who worked tirelessly to help her.”

A source said Fergie, who was discharged from hospital last Sunday after six days of medical care, was lucky as her cancer was caught early. They added: “Most people usually associate breast cancer with a lump but that’s not always the case. A lump can be detected by the patient, but this was a ‘shadow’, which can go undetected as it’s a wider spread of cancerous cells. In Sarah’s case, a biopsy was taken from the shadowy area of tissue and a few days later the results came back to confirm the diagnosis — breast cancer.”

[From The Sun]

Eugenie is only one month postpartum with her second child, I really hope all of this hasn’t fallen on her. Fergie better be getting real help from nurses and healthcare professionals as she recovers. Again, note that no one can even say if Andrew is helping out at all! Anyway, I feel for Fergie and her daughters. I genuinely hope Fergie makes a full recovery. And I also hope that Fergie moves out of Royal Lodge when she feels better. She’s got that other home in London now.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

I have only seen Allison Williams in two things: Peter Pan Live! from NBC and Get Out. With Peter Pan I thought she was in the range of meh to ok, but I knew that I would always be biased because I grew up adoring the 1950s version with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard. In Get Out I thought she was well cast and did a great job, but I also never felt like she was the only actress who could have played that role. I think it’s been smart of Allison to continue with the horror genre, even if she doesn’t want to do them forever. Obviously the glaring hole missing in my viewership of her resume is Girls, and for that I blame Lena Dunham. When Girls came out I had an instinctual “no thank you” response to Ms. Dunham–I admit freely that there was no fair appraisal, just my spidey senses–so to be fair I forfeited 139 minutes of my life to watching Tiny Furniture. I will never get that time back. Between that experience and, you know, everything Lena Dunham has said and done since, I feel comfortable with my original assessment. So it’s with mixed feelings that I take in Allison’s comments on misogyny in Hollywood and how Lena helped her navigate it, that Allison shared recently at the Nantucket Film Festival:

Allison Williams is reflecting on being referred to as “on-set eye candy” during one of her first jobs in Hollywood.

The Girls alum, 35, appeared on the “Women Behind the Words” panel at the Nantucket Film Festival last weekend and recalled some of the comments she received during one of her earliest gigs in Hollywood. Appearing alongside filmmaker Nicole Holofcener and actress Michaela Watkins, Williams remembered working as a stand-in on the Martin Scorcese-directed pilot of the HBO crime drama Boardwalk Empire, which aired in 2010.

“There’s like 10 stories fighting their way from my brain to my mother that I’m trying to keep out of my mouth,” The Perfection actress told the crowd, as IndieWire reported. “I guess one of them, just very quickly… people just underestimate your humanity often as a young woman up and coming in our business. I was a stand-in for the pilot of Boardwalk Empire, which was the coolest experience ever, an amazing pilot. It was shot on film. It was incredible. But I was at craft services and a member of the crew came up and said, ‘So what do you do here? You’re the on-set eye candy?’”

Williams went on to say that the exchange was just another example of misogyny she has experienced throughout her career.

“An actor I later worked with who watched me eat a pastry and said, ‘Don’t you want to be successful?’ You know, those kinds of comments come up inevitably.”

Williams went on to credit her Girls creator and co-star Lena Dunham for serving as a voice of reason in the wake of intense criticism.

“For everything like that, there’s like Lena who just so gently, and at basically my same age, would usher me through this very unusual experience and was such an unbelievably talented writer and director, and was able to just get me to breathe and slow down and not do anything, and in doing that, just trust the material and trust that the talent is there,” she recalled.

[From Yahoo]

“Williams went on to credit her Girls creator and co-star Lena Dunham for serving as a voice of reason in the wake of intense criticism.” I’m sorry but that makes me laugh so hard. Of course Lena would make you feel better about criticism, she very easily forgave herself for being racist! Oy gevolt. Moving past Lena’s invocation here, the anecdotes on being called the on-set eye candy and what the actor said to Allison for eating a pastry–both of those are heinous, no woman should have to deal with that crap at work (or anywhere, really). Not to mention the fact that Allison Williams is skinny! Still, it’s hard for me to lose track of the fact that she had a lot of good fortune when she got started. She addresses it herself later in the article, saying “I’ve been disproportionately lucky and privileged, and I intend to spend the rest of my life working off that credit by giving back and paying it forward.” She’s saying everything she should be saying, so why am I rolling my eyes? This is what I find tough with the nepo-babies. They should be judged by their work, not their connections, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to forget the leg up they have. Anyway, I still think Kaiser nailed it when she called Allison Williams “millennial Goop.”

photos credit: Backgrid, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, B4859/Avalon

Valentine Low is best known to royal-gossips as the Times of London royal reporter who got the big exclusive on Kensington Palace’s attempts to frame the Duchess of Sussex as a “bully” in 2021, just days before the Sussexes’ Oprah interview aired. It was an obvious scheme to smear Meghan because KP was terrified that she would speak about just how horribly she was treated and how the Windsors are full of racists. Low used those connections – KP staffers mostly, Simon Case and Jason Knauf – to position himself as a royal biographer in tune with the royal courtiers. Thus, Low released his book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, last October. It made minimal impact, as did many of the royal books released in a rush last fall, ahead of the publication of Prince Harry’s Spare.

Well, now Courtiers is coming out in paperback, and Low has updated it with sections about what happened after QEII passed away, and how “race and racism” is one of the biggest issues facing King Charles’s reign. The new sections were excerpted in the Times, and there’s a lot of dumb drama about how Charles started firing people basically as soon as he became king, how Charles and Camilla changed the locks on Angela Kelly within days (we already knew that) and how Charles’s private secretary Clive Alderton (Prince Harry referred to him as the Wasp in Spare) is in over his head and already unpopular with the old-guard at Buckingham Palace. In the section where Low describes the Susan Hussey debacle last November, he goes into the royal issues around race and, of course, the Duchess of Sussex.

The Susan Hussey debacle revealed just how much of a problem the issue of race is for the palace. The underlying issue was not going to go away, however: the royal family has a problem with race, and has done so ever since Meghan made clear how unhappy she had been during her time as a working royal.

The “bullying investigation”: Later, it emerged that the palace had appointed an outside firm of solicitors to conduct an inquiry. Just over a year later, the palace said it would not be releasing the outcome of the inquiry, or even revealing what lessons had been learnt, on the grounds of confidentiality. But most people suspected that the real reason they were burying the report was to try to keep the peace with Harry and Meghan.

The Oprah interview: The second, bigger challenge faced by the palace in March 2021 was Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. For most people, their most damaging accusation concerned what one courtier awkwardly called “the r-word”. That had come up because of remarks that a member of the royal family supposedly made about the colour of Harry and Meghan’s future baby’s skin. A palace team had watched the interview overnight — it was screened in the US on the evening of Sunday, March 7, and was not due to be shown in the UK until the next day — and senior officials had spent the morning locked in conference calls as they debated how to respond. A draft statement was ready by 2pm on Monday. Much to the frustration of the media, however, the palace remained silent. One insider said, “One of the reasons was that the late Queen was adamant that she was going to watch the programme first.” And she was going to watch it with the rest of the population, on ITV on Monday evening.

The palace response: The next day, the serious negotiations began over the official response. William and Kate – the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they were then — sat together on a sofa as they discussed with their officials how to deal with the Sussexes’ incendiary allegations. The draft statement they had at that point did not yet include the phrase that was to become famous, that “some recollections may vary”. The insider recalled, “It had a much milder version. The debate was, do you rise entirely above it and offer the olive branch of [Harry and Meghan being] ‘much loved members of the family’? Or is there some moment when you have to intervene and offer a view?”

Kate & William wanted a tough statement: While they were as concerned as anyone about not getting into a tit-for-tat with Harry and Meghan, William and Kate were clear which side of the debate they were on. “They wanted it toughened up a bit,” said the insider. “They were both of one mind that we needed something that said that the institution did not accept a lot of what had been said. He said, ‘It is really important that you guys come up with the right way of making sure that we are saying that this does not stand.’ She was certainly right behind him on it.”

Kate gets credit for “recollections may vary”: While some have attributed “recollections may vary” to Alderton, more than one source has said that the author was in fact Jean-Christophe Gray, William’s new private secretary, who had been in post for less than three weeks. At least two senior officials in other households were against its inclusion, because they feared that it would rile Harry and Meghan. But once the phrase had been added to the draft, it was — according to another source — the Duchess of Cambridge who pressed home the argument that it should remain. “It was Kate who clearly made the point, ‘History will judge this statement and unless this phrase or a phrase like it is included, everything that they have said will be taken as true.’ ”

Steely Keen: This was, said the source, yet another example of how Kate is often far steelier than she appears. “She does not get as much credit as she should, because she is so subtle about it. She is playing the long game. She has always got her eye on, ‘This is my life and my historic path and I am going to be the Queen one day.’ ” The toughened-up draft went to Buckingham Palace for approval, and came back a couple of hours later. The Queen had said yes.

Palace inertia: One critic who has seen the system from the inside argues that the palace has lost its way. It is partly, they say, down to a management culture that does not encourage risk-taking. “You’ve got a complete inertia in my view, a complete inability to make decisions, to lead, to think about things strategically. And that is why you end up in this mess that they’re in with the Sussexes, [the] Duke of York and the staff issues. Because they’re so worried about their own positions. They kind of lose track of what being a leader is.”

Meghan “never really wanted to be accepted”: Courtiers at their worst can fan the flames of family dissent, over-energetically pursuing their principal’s agenda at the cost of the wider interests of the institution. They can also be the voice of conservatism, which, depending on circumstances, can be a good thing or a bad thing. If they are protecting the monarchy from the foolishness of a member of the royal family who thinks they know best, that can only be for the good. But if they stand in the path of progress, the verdict of history will not be kind to them. Some of those who worked with Meghan argue that she never really wanted to be accepted by the royal family. That might be true. But if the institution had tried harder, and if she had been more willing to adapt herself to palace life, she could have been one of the royal family’s greatest assets.

[From The Times]

It’s difficult to take any of this seriously given how many times Low unquestioningly parrots the palace’s talking points. As in, it’s not our fault that we were unspeakably racist to Meghan, she never really wanted to fit into the royal family! GMAFB. The thing about the inquiry into the bullying accusations is also the palace’s talking point – if the accusations had ever been credible, if there was ever evidence that Meghan mistreated anyone, Knauf and Case would have leaked that sh-t years ago. It was always a trumped-up scheme to abuse and smear a Black woman who was speaking about how badly she had been treated. They could never release the findings of the inquiry because the findings made William and Kate look like what they are: racist imbeciles who can’t run an effective office.

As for Kate suddenly getting the credit/blame for “recollections may vary”… while I doubt Kate came up with it or even argued strongly for it, it’s fascinating that Kate is being pushed as the architect of that gaslighting bullsh-t. It’s also notable because this was 2021, about a year and a half before QEII passed away. Just how many statements were made with QEII’s “authorization” which she had nothing to do with?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Instar, Backgrid, CBS/Harpo.

I’ll never forget the week in which Prince William barked orders at his staff and demanded that they blanket the media with quotes about how he is the savior of homeless people. It was, in fact, just last week when the Kensington Palace clownshow went way overboard with their embiggening campaign for William, all because he’s donating £3 million of Royal Foundation money to create some kind of additional bureaucracy around housing people. The campaign, Homewards, might have been well-received if not for the wall-to-wall self-aggrandizement from William as he desperately tried to claim his mother’s memory and her popularity. Speaking of, KP went to Richard Kay at the Daily Mail, and Kay dutifully shat out this mess: “’If I become KING, I will let the homeless live in our PALACES’: William’s words to Diana at just 13 reveal why his crusade to end rough sleeping is inspired by his mother’s compassion.” Y’all. Some highlights!

William at 13: ‘If I become King,’ he told the Princess, using the deliberately cautious language of Royal Family members, ‘I will let the homeless live in our palaces.’ Diana was certainly struck by such an imaginative — if improbable — suggestion to solving a social crisis that is now many times more urgent than it was then. It was, she said, just the kind of unorthodox idea she might have come up with.

William isn’t “hot-headed” like Harry: For years, his somewhat guarded and watchful approach to his royal role has been contrasted with Harry’s outspoken, hot-headed, cavalier style. Insiders have long considered that while he physically resembled his mother, William was in temperament more a Windsor: wary like his late grandmother and stubborn like Charles. Yet, increasingly, it seems Diana’s influence on him outweighs that of his father. Indeed, as he gets older and moves closer to the throne, his outlook appears more than ever to resemble the mother he lost.

The first over ownership of Diana’s legacy: And yet, in the years after Diana’s death, it seemed at times as though her part in the Princes’ lives was being airbrushed from royal history. We now know that was not the case. As the 20th anniversary of the Princess’s death approached, both William and Harry spoke movingly of memories of their mother and the debt they owed her. Sadly, as the relationship between the brothers deteriorated, that affection for Diana turned into a tussle over her legacy. Who truly was Diana’s heir? The impulsive Harry, or the dutiful William?

Diana’s sons: Harry has chosen a grievance narrative, using it to cloak himself as his mother’s true son. He has cast Meghan as a victim of an unscrupulous Palace just as Diana was. In his book and in interviews he has often invoked her name. William, by contrast, has staked his claim by choosing his official priorities. Aged 23, he took on his mother’s patronage of Centrepoint, the homeless charity, and later succeeded her as president of the Royal Marsden Hospital where she did so much to highlight the fight against cancer. These were two of his most significant causes.

William can’t walk & chew gum at the same time: The truth is that both brothers have manifestly inherited much from her. And what is particularly intriguing is that with so many new responsibilities as Prince of Wales, William is declaring that what is motivating him is his mother’s unfinished business. Courtiers question whether he will display quite the same level of attention to the huge portfolios he has taken on from his father — such as the Duchy of Cornwall — that he is currently showing in his plans to eradicate homelessness. Perhaps because it had been such a large part of his own life for so long, Charles obsessed over every detail of the 130,000-acre estate, with its vast holdings of agricultural land and residential and commercial property, including London’s Oval cricket ground.

Is William actually like Diana at all? So who does he most take after? According to one of Diana’s oldest friends, William is driven by his mother’s influence. ‘He has a strong sense of duty he has inherited from his father, but everything else — and what motivates him as a parent — comes from Diana,’ says the friend. ‘He has an instinctive touch, which she had. But there is one thing I think he would like that his mother enjoyed: she was adored by people because of all the things she did. William would like to be loved like that.’

Curious: The affection for Diana was unique: an outsider trapped in a miserable marriage who drew comfort from the less privileged lives of ordinary people she met. William’s hinterland is the polar opposite: a uniquely happy marriage to Kate and a partnership of equals where, unlike his parents, there is no competition for the spotlight.

[From The Daily Mail]

This sums it all up: “William would like to be loved like that.” It’s not that he particularly cares about homeless people or any particular cause. It’s not that William wants to emulate his mother’s work ethic and passions. It’s not that William even cares that much about reclaiming his mother’s legacy whatsoever. William just wants whatever Harry has, and William wants to be loved and admired as Diana was… without having to put in the work. William thinks he can simply mention Diana or invoke her name a few times and people will fall all over themselves because he’s “Diana’s son.” Meanwhile, we see Diana’s redheaded child living out Diana’s dream of getting away from that dreadful family and starting over. We see Diana’s iconoclastic nature mirrored in her youngest. Harry is actually too busy fighting all of his mother’s fights, whereas William just wanders around, telling people that he’s a lot like his mother.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were seen and photographed this weekend in Santa Barbara! I don’t know exactly what they were doing or where they were, TMZ just says that they left an office building in Santa Barbara. Given the casual way they’re dressed – Harry in jeans and worn polo, Meghan in shorts, shades & a hat – I would assume they were not doing business meetings, but probably just hanging out with friends or something. I really don’t know.

Meghan Markle & Prince Harry All Smiles Amid Uncertain Hollywood Future https://t.co/USH7qrRXxm

— TMZ (@TMZ) July 2, 2023

This appearance came amid a weekend full of Salt Island obsession. The Daily Mail ran several stories about Harry and Meghan’s business, and it’s all just so stalker-y. The Mail’s Alison Boshoff wrote an overwrought piece about how Meghan and Harry’s careers are diverging now, and Meghan is going to do more entertainment-industry stuff while Harry focuses more on charity and humanitarian work. It’s left unsaid that their next big Netflix project is something Harry put together: Heart of Invictus, which will come out this summer.

Boshoff also made a claim which has been widely picked up by British and American media, namely that the Sussexes “feel unlucky” because of global and family events. As in, the pandemic hit just as they were trying to build their new lives in America, and then Harry’s grandparents passed away in 2021 and 2022. Then there were market corrections when it came to Netflix and Spotify. Which… you know what, I’m actually glad they got their Netflix and Spotify deals when the money was good. Now Meghan has WME to help her get even better deals. Anyway, objectively speaking, they have been “unlucky” with how some things are timed. That being said, who f–king cares and why is the British media still writing these creepy, obsessive stalker articles?

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle hold hands and share a laugh and joke together in Santa Barbara https://t.co/BThwYu6zCg

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) July 3, 2023

We love accessories! Meghan wearing –
Shoes – @Hermes_Paris – https://t.co/zKzEx6frRr
Hat – @JanessaLeone – https://t.co/dRbEmff414
Sunglasses – @MaisonValentino
Belt – @RalphLauren – https://t.co/2rZjlOraSk pic.twitter.com/5BWNHOsPzT

— What Meghan Wore (@whatmegwore) July 2, 2023

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.