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Every now and then my mother will stop and say, apropos of nothing, “You know, I really thought we would’ve had teleportation by now.” Well Ma, we may not have teleportation, but we do have holograms and they’re causing existential crises for celebrities and their legacies. We heard Dolly Parton chime in last week and she gave it a sweet and folksy no thank you. Now Whoopi Goldberg has weighed in, saying on a recent episode of The View that she’s taken precautions in her will to guard against any hologram of her being made after she’s gone:

Whoopi Goldberg really wants you to know that she does not want to live on in this life as a hologram.

During a discussion about Aretha Franklin’s newly discovered couch-dwelling will papers, the Oscar-winning Ghost actress, Diablo IV video game fanatic, and The View moderator revealed that her own will prevents anyone from making a digital hologram of her likeness after she dies.

“Yeah, no, I don’t want to be a hologram, but that’s been in my will for 15 years,” the 67-year-old cohost said on Wednesday’s episode of the talk show, referring to a celebrity hologram modeled after Whitney Houston.

Cohost Joy Behar then quipped, “No one has really asked me if I want to be a hologram yet,” to which Goldberg replied: “They don’t ask you, that’s the thing. They just do it, and then you go, ‘Hey, isn’t that Tupac? Wait a minute, didn’t Tupac die? What is he doing up on…’ Yeah, see, I don’t want that. It’s a little freaky, creepy.

Alyssa Farah Griffin chimed in to say she thought it was okay if the celebrity’s estate approved of such a move, but Goldberg shut that down, too.

“Yeah, my estate doesn’t want it,” Goldberg said. “My estate wants to be left alone.”

This isn’t the first time Goldberg has revealed the contents of her will on The View. In December 2022, she said that her post-death documents prevent unauthorized biopics about her life.

“They’re not going to make films because in my will it says, ‘Unless you speak to my family, try it.’ Try it,” Goldberg said at the time.

[From Yahoo! Entertainment]

So I’m lucky in that my day job is working with the estate of a dearly-departed entertainer, and I can tell you that this is a hot-button issue right now (holograms, not Whoopi’s will). And for obvious reasons, right? Operating under the assumption that we can’t control anything after we die, the drive then is to preemptively protect yourself from people putting words in your mouth and from being associated with something you don’t sign off on, and naturally all that is amplified in the case of a public figure. Putting explicit instructions in legal writing is necessary–don’t forget how close we came to Justin Timberlake besmirching Prince with a hologram at the 2018 Superbowl Halftime Show. With SAG-AFTRA officially on strike alongside the WGA, and one of the key issues being safeguards against AI, I think we’re going to be hearing a lot of artists talking more openly about this. So I think Whoopi is doing the right thing in spelling out her wishes clearly in her will. That being said, it is pretty hilarious that she’s thinking about keeping other people from maligning her image when she does a heck of a job doing that to herself.

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I’ll pretty much believe any conspiracy you’ve got about Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s “presidential campaign” and why he’s running. It’s clear that the man is a total nutjob, but it’s also clear that there are many powerful people backing his whackjob candidacy behind the scenes. And by powerful people, I mean Republican operatives. So give me your best conspiracy! I want to hear it. This honestly reeks of ratf–king, in the same way as Kanye West’s “candidacy” in 2020. In any case, RFK Jr. is doing meetings and dinners with important people in the media world. Which led to this Page Six headline: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. press dinner explodes in war of words and farting.” I’m mad because I hate RFK Jr. too much to actual enjoy a story about farting.

Page Six regrets to report that a press dinner to boost Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign devolved into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting on Tuesday night. The White House hopeful attended the affair at Tony’s on the Upper East Side, no doubt hoping to impress on the ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate his worthiness to sit at the very same Oval Office desk once occupied by his late uncle. But a shouting match over climate change broke out between two boisterous old men, sending the evening down an extremely unfortunate path.

The gaseous exchange — to which Page Six bore reluctant witness — began after a guest asked Kennedy, founder of ecological organization Waterkeeper Alliance, about the environment. And it seems that the mere inquiry was enough to set off apparently drunk gossip-columnist-turned-flak Doug Dechert, the host of the event, who became enraged and screamed at the top of his lungs: “The climate hoax!”

Meanwhile, octogenarian art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, who appeared to have been sleeping happily for most of the dinner, was roused by the abrupt rumpus. Haden-Guest suddenly opened his eyes and denounced his longtime pal Dechert, calling him a “miserable blob.” “Shut up!” implored Haden-Guest.

Dechert continued to scream wildly about the climate change “scam” while Haden-Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously “f*cking insane” and “insignificant.”

RFK Jr. meanwhile, a prospective president of the United States, watched calmly on.

Here, it seems, Dechert sensed the need for a new rhetorical tack, and let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, “I’m farting!”

The room, which included a handful of journalists as well as RFK Jr.’s campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, was stunned, seemingly unsure about whether Dechert was farting at Haden-Guest personally or at the very notion of global warming. (Regrettably, we may assure readers that there was no room for doubt that the climate changed in the immediate environs of the dinner table). The candidate maintained a steady composure in the face of the crisis.

[From Page Six]

Regardless of the political implications, the only thing I enjoy more than a fart story is a story about someone ANNOUNCING that they’re farting. There’s something about someone stopping what they’re doing just so they can focus on letting one rip, whilst simultaneously announcing “I’m farting!” As I get older, I also have to stop what I’m doing so I can focus on the act of breaking wind. Anyway, Robert Kennedy Jr. is a ratf–king Republican stooge and I hate that a small number of people are buying whatever batsh-t lunacy he’s selling.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Clarence Thomas’s assistant got Venmo payments from lawyers who had business in front of the Supreme Court. Impeach this man, Jesus. [Jezebel]
I love the fact that Kieran Culkin is now famous enough to get paid to show up to Tag Heuer boutique openings in NYC. [JustJared]
Review of Mission: Impossible: Revenge of the Colons. [LaineyGossip]
Let’s look at Chanel’s Fall collection. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Why is there so little hype for EL James’s new book? [Pajiba]
This Elie Saab collection is so pretty. [GFY]
A reality star & his influencer wife are expecting. [Starcasm]
I love the Italian pick-pocket screamer lady. [Buzzfeed]
100 million people have signed up for Threads already. I have not. [Towleroad]
Menswear at the London Barbie premiere. IDGAF – they’re just Ken. [RCFA]

Brian Cox has lived in America for many years, mostly to work in American films and television. He’s currently living in Brooklyn, which is apparently the only place in America he enjoys (and even then, not so much). Cox is perpetually grumpy and he’s just a full-time hater, I think that much is clear. Well, Cox decided to chat with Piers Morgan on Morgan’s sad TalkTV show, and the two blowhards decided to complain about woke culture and how wrong it is to “shame” people for being bigots and racists and such. You can see the video here, I’m not embedding it.

Brian Cox is going viral after taking jabs at the notion of “woke culture” during a recent interview with Piers Morgan. Amid the celebration of Succession making history at the Emmy Awards nominations Cox, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong, scoring noms in the Lead Actor category, the interview with the Scottish actor talk about being anti-woke is making the rounds.

“I don’t think social media helps. It hinders, not helps,” Cox said during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “I think it points out too readily inadequacies. And the whole woke, what we’ve talked about before, the whole woke culture is truly awful […] and the shaming culture… I don’t know where it comes from. Who are the arbiters of this shaming? And it’s very hard to pin them down, and, it turns out, it’s usually a bunch of millennials. And who gave them the halos? I suppose in a way they’re probably saying, ‘Well you’ve all screwed it up so we may as well do something about it.’ But it’s from the wrong principle. It comes from the wrong place.”

According to Merriam-Webster, being “woke” is being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

This is not the first time that Cox has gone onto Morgan’s show to talk about “cancel culture.” In 2022, Cox said, “It’s a kind of modern-day McCarthyism, really. “It’s a kind of raid on people’s sensibilities in order to reduce them and make them… I don’t know, there is so much hypocrisy involved with the whole thing.”

[From Deadline]

“It turns out, it’s usually a bunch of millennials” should be the go-to excuse for anything. What happened at that party? Why is the real estate market so chaotic? Why did we go through four years of Donald Trump? “It turns out, it’s usually a bunch of millennials.” Keep in mind, elder Millennials are in their early 40s now. I’m not sure if Cox actually means Gen Z, the people in their 20s right now. Anyway, this just reads like two old farts bitching about the youths and their “cancel culture.” They have no idea what they’re actually complaining about. I hope Emmy voters ignore Cox – who is nominated in the lead actor category despite only appearing in three episodes of Succession – and vote for Kieran Culkin or Jeremy Strong!

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

The day before the Emmy Award nominations came out, the Hollywood Critics Association Awards announced their nominations. Fans of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were pleased that their Netflix series, Harry & Meghan, picked up a nomination for “Best Streaming Nonfiction Series.” I said yesterday that considering the success of the Netflix series, I did expect Harry & Meghan to pick up an Emmy nomination too. The series did not. The Sussexes were “snubbed” again, cue the Salt Island schadenfreude. “The Sussex Brand will never recover,” hurr durr.

Netflix’s megahit documentary series on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle failed to earn any Emmy nominations this morning, a snub that presumably will delight critics of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The six-part series Harry & Meghan directed by Liz Garbus was under consideration for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. The Emmy oversight is particularly glaring because the series scored extraordinary numbers for Netflix, racking up the second most viewing minutes of any documentary program on the streaming platform, behind only The Tinder Swindler.

As a consolation, Harry & Meghan did earn an honor on Tuesday when it was nominated for the Hollywood Critics Association Awards in the category of Best Streaming Nonfiction Series.

[From Deadline]

Considering the Sussexes’ Netflix show is up against The 1619 Project at the HCA Awards, I would assume that Harry & Meghan was being considered in the Emmy Awards’ version of that category: “Documentary or Nonfiction Series.” The nominees in that category are: 100 Foot Wave, The 1619 Project, Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, Secrets of the Elephants and The U.S. and the Holocaust. Given those nominees, I would think that Harry & Meghan simply felt a bit too… tabloid-y and unserious? Yes, of course I watched the series and I know that they spoke about serious subjects, but the larger problem still remains: the Sussexes are without industry peers and they are incapable of fitting into these categories or boxes. They’re celebrities but they’re more than that, they’re humanitarians but they do other stuff, they did a docu-series about real sh-t, but it was also part of the larger tabloid narrative around them. I guess my point is, who needs the Emmy Awards if you’re Harry and Meghan? The Emmys are probably gonna be canceled anyway.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

The lawsuits against Brad Pitt are really starting to mess with his head. I can feel the panic from Brad and from his team. Pitt isn’t just dealing with Angelina Jolie and her legal team anymore – one of the smartest things Jolie did was sell Nouvel, her half of the Chateau Miraval, to Yuri Shefler, a billionaire with enough resources, time and inclination to go toe-to-toe with Pitt. This week, Shefler/Nouvel filed some scathing new legal documents against Pitt in a California court. Shefler mocked Pitt as petulant, childish and a sh-tty businessman who looted Miraval’s profits and tried to cut Nouvel out of the business. Even People Magazine did comprehensive coverage of the new filings, so you know it’s getting bad – People famously ignores bad news for Pitt. Well, Pitt’s team ran to Page Six (one of their favorite outlets to brief to) and I can see that Pitt is now giving Yuri Shefler the full Jolie Treatment: delusional accusations backed up with nothing but Pitt’s ego.

Brad Pitt is determined to force out the Russian vodka oligarch to whom Angelina Jolie secretly sold her share of their $500 million French vineyard, sources tell Page Six exclusively. Pitt is furious at Yuri Shefler for mocking him in court filings first revealed Monday as “an actor, not a winemaker” and painting him as a Hollywood dilettante. Now he is more determined than ever to get rid of the Russian, sources say.

Vodka magnate Shefler was officially designated by the US Treasury as an oligarch in 2018 — then bought Jolie’s share of Château Miraval in 2021. Sources say Pitt views Jolie’s sale to the Russian president’s henchman as “vindictive” because Jolie knew he had previously turned down an approach from Shefler.

But Shefler allegedly wants to keep Pitt on as a figurehead in the company, and use him for his celebrity status, leaving Pitt no option but to attempt to oust him, according to those familiar with the legal fight. Pitt is now litigating against both Jolie and Shefler, the owner of Stoli, the company that makes the flagship Russian vodka Stolichnaya, in California and in Luxembourg over Château Miraval. He wants to force her to unravel her deal with Shefler.

But in California court papers Monday, Stefler’s lawyers said Pitt had at most “visited the vineyards to admire the work of the French laborers who actually made the business,” and said: “Pitt is an actor, not a winemaker. He deals in illusions, not dirt and grapes.”

Before they married, the couple bought the estate together, with Pitt owning 60 percent and Jolie 40 percent. They brought in winemaker Marc Perrin, and it became one of the world’s most highly-regarded producers of rosé. The château, where the couple tied the knot in 2014, became Pitt’s “passion,” and he gifted Jolie an extra 10 percent as part of their wedding, making it a 50-50 asset when they split in 2016.

Sources tell Page Six that Shefler actually twice approached Pitt himself to buy into Miraval, first in 2016 when the couple split and then in 2021 when their custody fight over their kids became public. But, sources close to Pitt say, when he “politely” turned them down, they “secretly” went to Jolie, who ignored what Pitt’s side says was an agreement that he had first refusal on any sale by her.

“Then in October 2021, they announce they are Brad’s new partner to the world in a trade publication,” the source said. “The entire deal is Angie being vindictive. These guys are bottom feeders.”

Jolie’s attorney Paul Murphy told The Post that she had the right to sell the shares and that Pitt had tried to silence her over abuse allegations, which the FBI investigated and made a “probable cause” statement about, but which did not lead to charges against Pitt. A source close to Jolie told The Post: “One can only imagine what she and the children feel when, once their abuse is known to the world, it means so little and stories focus on swimming pools and staircases instead of the harm they endured.”

[From Page Six]

That last quote is extraordinary and true – Pitt is more concerned about the charge of “Pitt is not a real wine-maker” than he is about “Pitt terrorized and abused his wife and children.” Speaking of, the Post also published this quote from a source close to Pitt: “Brad stands by the people who he’s done business with and he doesn’t give into bullies.” Jaysus. Pitt crying about being bullied is where we are. As for “Shefler allegedly wants to keep Pitt on as a figurehead in the company, and use him for his celebrity status, leaving Pitt no option but to attempt to oust him” – LMAO. I guarantee that Shefler wants no part of Brad Pitt. Shefler’s endgame isn’t “keeping Pitt as a powerless figurehead.” Shefler’s endgame is now the complete destruction of Brad Pitt and complete ownership of Miraval.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

True story: I avoided watching the Wonka trailer for 24 hours, so I’m just watching it for the first time now and… wow, they really got the tone wrong. They made this Roald Dahl character into a Disney hero? [OMG Blog]
Tom Cruise is a total pro at press junkets & movie promotion. [LaineyGossip]
Review of Joy Ride, a raunchy romp. [Pajiba]
Sara Bareilles’ glasses are awful & unflattering. [Go Fug Yourself]
Jennifer Lawrence went to a Pilates class in LA. [Just Jared]
Fox announces their fall premiere line-up. [Seriously OMG]
Iowa Republicans passed a six-week abortion bill. [Jezebel]
Camila Cabello is on vacation in Greece. [Egotastic]
This dentist is telling people to protect their teeth by avoiding citrus & bread? I mean, I get that dentists don’t want people to drink soda, but bread? [Buzzfeed]
Yikes, please stop getting vampire facials. [Towleroad]
Sofia Carson wore a cute Giambattista Valli dress. [RCFA]

True story: Queen Camilla is a big tennis fan, and over the years, she’s made a point of attending many matches at Wimbledon. While she’s reportedly a huge fan of Rafael Nadal, she’ll go to other players’ matches. Well, after skipping for a few years, Camilla was out today at Wimbledon for the quarterfinal matches on Centre Court. She arrived early to watch the entire women’s match (Ons Jabeur vs. Elena Rybakina) and I would assume that she’ll stay for the men’s quarterfinal, Carlos Alcaraz vs. Holger Rune. Maybe she has a thing for Spanish men – Carlos has been billed as Rafa Jr. (their games are very different though). Still, Camilla has good taste in tennis matches – she chose to go to Wimbledon for some of the most exciting match-ups of the tournament (and she avoided Novak Djokovic, lol). Alcaraz vs. Rune should be amazing and Jabeur-Rybakina was last year’s women’s final.

When Camilla does attend Wimbledon, she usually goes with her sister, and that’s what happened today. Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot was with her in the Royal Box. Annabel is also one of Camilla’s ladies-in-waiting/companions. Camilla also greeted some of the Wimbledon officials when she arrived and they made a big fuss over her.

By my admittedly haphazard research, this seems to be the first time Camilla has gone to Wimbledon since 2019? I wonder why she skipped it for four years? Is it because of Kate staking her claim on the tournament? Perhaps. I also think it’s interesting that Kate has, thus far, only been to Wimbledon one day. A pretty poor showing from the royal patron. Kate has missed some great matches.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.

Cillian Murphy doesn’t like the fame part of being an actor. He moved his family out of London when his children started speaking with British accents, and the family moved back to Ireland. Apparently, Cillian lives a completely normal life there with his family, with no fame trappings and, according to this Guardian piece, no cell phone or email. People practically have to send him a carrier pigeon to get in touch with him or cast him in a movie. Cillian chatted about all of that and more with the Guardian and he absolutely comes across as rather an odd bird, but also just… not engaged with the hustle and bustle of modernity. Some highlights:

Whether he’s pleased with Oppenheimer. “I am, yeah. I don’t like watching myself – it’s like, ‘Oh, f–king hell’ – but it’s an extraordinary piece of work. Very provocative and powerful. It feels sometimes like a biopic, sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a horror. It’s going to knock people out. What [Nolan] does with film, it f–ks you up a little bit.”

No email, computer or phone: It was Nolan’s wife, the producer Emma Thomas, who called Murphy one afternoon at the home he shares with his wife, artist Yvonne McGuinness, and two teenage sons. Nolan doesn’t actually have a telephone, or an email, or computer for that matter: “He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter.”

He tested himself to see how little he could eat on ‘Oppenheimer’. “You become competitive with yourself a little bit which is not healthy. I don’t advise it.” He won’t say how many kilograms he lost, or what food the nutritionist told him to cut out. NDA? “Ach, no. I don’t want it to be, ‘Cillian lost x weight for the part’.”

Nolan filmed quickly, which helped Cillian lose weight & grow a sickly demeanor: “It’s like you’re on this f–king train that’s just bombing. It’s bang, bang, bang, bang. You sleep for a few hours, get up, bang it again. I was running on crazy energy; I went over a threshold to where I was not worrying about food or anything… But it was good because the character was like that. He never ate.” Oppenheimer subsisted on little more than Chesterfield cigarettes and double-strength martinis, rims dipped in lime. “Cigarettes and pipes. He would alternate between the two. That’s what did for him in the end,” Murphy adds, a nod to the scientist’s death from cancer in 1967. “I’ve smoked so many fake cigarettes for Peaky and this. My next character will not be a smoker. They can’t be good for you. Even herbal cigarettes have health warnings now.”

But he’s not a method actor: “Method acting is a sort of … No,” he says, firm but with a half smile. Oppenheimer had many defining characteristics, not least walking on the balls of his feet and a vocal tic that sounded like nim-nim-nim, but Murphy didn’t want to do an impression. “He was dancing between the raindrops morally. He was complex, contradictory, polymathic; incredibly attractive intellectually and charismatic, but ultimately unknowable.”

He hates doing talk shows: “I do them because you’re contractually obliged to. I just endure them. I’ve always found it difficult. I’ve said this so many, many times….I want to just caveat this by saying, I’m so privileged. I’m so happy to be doing what I love. I’m really lucky. But I don’t enjoy the personality side of being an actor. I don’t understand why I should be entertaining and scintillating on a talkshow. I don’t know why all of a sudden that’s expected of me. Why?” I say that he reminds me of Naomi Osaka, the tennis player who refused to talk to journalists after the French Open in 2021. He says he feels “100%” sympathy with her, “because why should she have to perform?” Then he relents. “But I get it. I get it’s a kind of ecosystem where the film feeds the publicity which feeds the talkshows which goes back and feeds the film, so, like, that’s how it works. I suppose I’m just not good at it. At interviews, at this stuff… Do you know what Sam Beckett said? ‘I have no views to inter.’ I love that. That should be the interview.”

Dinner with scientific geniuses: “I had dinner with all these geniuses. I’ll never understand quantum mechanics, but I was interested in what science does to their perspective.” He sought their opinions on subjects that matter – love, politics, our place in the universe, “infinity, or whatever the f–k. Because they have a completely different way of taking in information than we do. I remember one scientist saying, ‘I don’t believe in love. It’s a biological phenomenon, the exchange of hormones between the female and the male. That’s all. Love is a nonsense.’ I couldn’t go along with that, obviously.”

[From The Guardian]

Is Cillian going on Graham Norton or something? I need to know his talk show schedule so I can watch his visible discomfort. The American talk show hosts are going to eat him alive. Maybe he’ll enjoy Stephen Colbert? But the morning shows… yeesh, it won’t be pretty. I also didn’t realize that he lost weight for the role because he was trying to mimic Oppenheimer’s physique. And all of the smoking and drinking – people today don’t realize that basically everyone – scientists, doctors, actors, ad men, housewives – were all day-drunk chain-smokers all the time and that’s just how it was. That was the normal culture, everyone drunk all the time and you could smoke everywhere.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

As we discussed yesterday, the fight over Chateau Miraval continues to be a giant mess. Angelina Jolie successfully sold her half of Miraval to a Stoli subsidiary. Her half is called Nouvel, and Stoli is owned by Yuri Shefler. At this point, I don’t understand why the English-language press continues to act like the fight is solely about Angelina and Brad, when it’s clear that Shefler is on the warpath. While Pitt wallows in petulance and sad-sack grievance over Angelina selling Nouvel, Shefler is having the French authorities raid Miraval and there is, I believe, a significant criminal case to be made for Pitt defrauding Nouvel and defrauding his new business partner. Anyway, Nouvel (now owned by Shefler) launched a scathing attack on Pitt in new court filings this week. The Financial Times had some highlights, which we covered yesterday, but People Magazine had even more, including quotes from a “source close to Pitt.”

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s legal battle over the French winery they once owned together continues as Jolie’s former company makes harsh claims about Pitt. About Château Miraval, Jolie’s former investment firm Nouvel said in a new court filing obtained by PEOPLE that Pitt, 59, “has been engaged in a vindictive campaign to dominate and loot the wine business that the couple had built and owned together.”

Nouvel’s attorneys wrote that Pitt’s investment company Mondo Bongo has the same 50 percent ownership of Château Miraval as Nouvel. So, they write, “as a co-equal owner, Pitt enjoys precisely the same rights and obligations as Nouvel — nothing more, nothing less.” However, the filing claims that “following a script that may play in Hollywood but not in a court of law, Pitt and his co-conspirators have engaged in increasingly outrageous actions to retain control over Château Miraval and harm Nouvel by stripping Château Miraval of its assets….Incensed that Jolie sold Nouvel to Stoli rather than him, Pitt has acted like a petulant child, refusing to treat Nouvel as an equal partner in the business.”

Reps for Pitt did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. A Pitt source familiar with the litigation claims to PEOPLE, “Brad built this business with Angelina for their family and she sold it behind his back. He wants to hold on to the business and continue to grow it.”

Nouvel’s filing claimed Jolie “offered to sell her interest” to Pitt and “negotiated with him for months.” But, “Pitt’s hubris got the better of him: he made an eleventh-hour demand for onerous and irrelevant conditions, including provision designed to prohibit Jolie from publicly speaking about the events that had led to the breakdown of their marriage.”

Pitt’s lawyers said the connection to the “Russia-affiliated spirits conglomerate” now “jeopardizes the reputation of the business that Pitt so carefully built.” Nouvel’s latest filing called that a “xenophobic, untrue smear campaign” and said Shefler is a “Russian exile who is a long-time critic of Vladimir Putin.”

In recent court documents, Pitt’s side said he and Jolie bought “the château as a home to share with their children and the vineyard as a family business.” And, “Jolie, though supportive of Pitt’s efforts on behalf of the family, did none of the work necessary for Miraval’s success.”

“The purported sale disrupts Pitt’s right to enjoy the home he established for his family,” his legal team then added. In its filing this week, Nouvel downpalyed Pitt’s involvement with the business (he “is an actor, not a winemaker,” they wrote, “he deals in illusions, not dirt and grapes) and said Château Miraval is no “family home.”

“The notion that Chateau Miraval was the Pitt-Jolie family home died back in 2016 when Pitt terrorized his wife and children in a drunken rage while en route from the chateau to Pitt’s true home — Hollywood,” they wrote. Nouvel legal team added, “This is a fight about money and corporate control, not a fight over a family home.”

A Pitt source responds to claims about his involvement in the wine company, saying, “It’s obviously going very well or else nobody would be fighting over this company. It’s a very successful brand, and he’s done a lot with it.”

Jolie’s attorney Paul Murphy claims, in part, in statement obtained by PEOPLE Tuesday, “The reality is that Pitt refused to complete the Miraval sale with Jolie unless she agreed to be silenced about the abuse. She legally sold her shares, yet Pitt persists in lawsuits against her.”

[From People]

The quotes from Nouvel’s filing are fire, and the quotes from “sources close to Pitt” are fascinating. “Brad built this business with Angelina for their family and she sold it behind his back. He wants to hold on to the business and continue to grow it.” In fact, he cut her out of the business for years and mismanaged her investment, and she was well within her rights to sell to a third party. But Pitt seems to be on the back foot here as well – it was much easier for him when he was bullying and financially abusing his ex-wife, but now he’s dealing with Shefler and Shefler is perfectly willing to air all of Pitt’s fraud and financial abuse in court. Pitt thought he could just sue Jolie and somehow reverse the sale of Nouvel. Nouvel’s new owner said: bitch, you thought. As I said, I think the endgame here is that Shefler will end up owning 100% of Miraval.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.