Tuesday was the first day of Royal Ascot. King Charles and Queen Camilla were there, and they apparently plan to attend every day. They arrived with Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot, Annabel’s son Ben Elliot (who is a Tory operative) and Princess Anne. There were other royals and royal-adjacents in the mix too – Princess Beatrice was there with her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (he loves Ascot) and Zara and Mike Tindall were there. Zara’s particularly close to her uncle, the king, and she seems particularly close to Prince William as well.

Interesting fashion note: Camilla wore Dior at Ascot. Was she behind the whole f–king Dior narrative which consumed the British tabloids for three solid days? The Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph, the Mirror and every other outlet all ran stories about how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would sign up to be Dior ambassadors (they will not), and now Camilla steps out in Dior? It’s a message, but I don’t speak Horsey Sidechick.

Other fashion notes: Zara wore a pale floral £660 dress by Leo Lin which I actually sort of like for the occasion. Like, it’s Ascot in June. She looks fine and appropriate. Beatrice wore a £495 Beulah dress which is completely awful. I’m begging designers to stop making sh-t that looks like this.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.

Something I realized lately is that Jennifer Lawrence is wearing other designers besides Dior for her red carpet appearances. Of all the celebrity fashion contracts, only Margot Robbie’s doomed stint with Chanel has yielded worse results to me. Jennifer’s essence is so casual and breezy. Dior is too prim and proper for her. I’ve liked some of her non-Dior looks while she’s promoting her new comedy, No Hard Feelings (although this look was kind of an abomination). Comedy seems like such a perfect fit for Jennifer, I hope she gets to do more of them. She was interviewed by Cameron Diaz for Interview mag, and it seems like they are buddies. They talked about the lack of R-rated comedies in recent years, how motherhood has affected Jennifer’s career, and how she runs her production company, Excellent Cadaver, with her producing partner and friend Justine. Jennifer’s really proud of No Hard Feelings and it totally shows.

Jennifer feels like she’s found a new “sweet spot” with comedy:

DIAZ: Okay. I’m super excited about No Hard Feelings. This is something you were born to do, hard R comedies. It might be your sweet spot.

LAWRENCE: Whatever I was feeling while making that movie, if that’s my sweet spot, then I don’t ever want to do anything else.

There aren’t enough comedies aimed at adults:

DIAZ: That comes down to, why are not that many of those comedies being made? What is wrong with the audience or society?

LAWRENCE: We just need the laugh right now, because we’re living in a nightmare. I snuck into one of the test screenings, and being surrounded by people laughing makes things funnier. It’s not the same when you’re alone in your living room.

Motherhood has made Jennifer more selective about what projects she does:

DIAZ: So how is it for you in-between projects? Especially now that you’re a mom, are you feeling like you want to spend time at home? Or does it feel like you can still squeeze in a project here and there?

LAWRENCE: There’s no squeezing when you have a baby. There’s just home, and it’s the best. It definitely helps weed out projects: “Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Is this worth being away from my child for half the day?”

How she gets things done with her producing partner, Justine Ciarrocchi:

LAWRENCE: …I’ve worked with people where it’s a good cop and a bad cop. Justine and I like to think that it’s good cop, good cop. You don’t have to be an asshole to get things done.

DIAZ: Absolutely. I kind of shy away from the question of, is it because you’re both women? But do you feel like women approach problem-solving in a different way than men do?

LAWRENCE: Women have been welcomed—I don’t want to say welcomed—allowed, into more parts of the industry. I can’t speak for every woman but there’s this extra gusto. You want to prove yourself, and you’ve had to do everything the hard way for a really, really long time. So you’re just used to not being able to ask somebody to do something for you.

[From Interview Magazine]

I think what Jennifer’s saying about being a woman rings true in just about any industry. We have to work harder at baseline to be taken seriously. But Hollywood seems to really attract and protect toxic men in positions of power. It always has. (See also: Louis B. Mayer.) For most of the industry’s history, the unofficial mantra has been, “you have to be an a–hole to get things done/make great art.” It will be interesting to see if production companies like Jennifer’s can meaningfully change that. I didn’t realize that her company, Excellent Cadaver, produced the documentary Bread and Roses. It’s a film about what women in Afghanistan are going through under the Taliban. I know it premiered in France but I’m unsure if it’s been picked up by a distributor. Anyway it’s interesting to see that Jennifer’s company produced a film like that and a raunchy sex comedy. That’s range.

I’ve never been one for “hard R” comedies, honestly–it just isn’t my vibe. But I do think it’s perfect for Jennifer. She can do screwball raunchy comedy in her sleep. No wonder she’s so proud of this movie. Am I going to watch it? Probably not. Am I going to continue to refer to it as the Buick Movie? Yes. Am I happy Jennifer’s happy? Also yes.

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photos credit: TatianaK/Backgrid, Getty and Acero/Alter Photos/Avalon

Liz Truss could not outlast a head of lettuce as prime minister, and somehow she balks at being “compared” to said lettuce? Girl, it was the best part of your 44-day reign. [Jezebel]
Lainey’s take on the Sussexes/Spotify split. [LaineyGossip]
Avril Lavigne & Tyga are over? I forgot they were together. [JustJared]
AI generated potential new “Apple products.” [OMG Blog]
Jerry O’Connell plays the bad guy. [Seriously OMG]
Pete Davidson is a reckless driver. [Dlisted]
Another thinkpiece on why The Idol sucks. [Pajiba]
Patricia Field & Kim Cattrall remain quite close. [GFY]
First-time homeowners describe the lessons they’ve learned. [Buzzfeed]
Madonna made her boyfriend sign an NDA? [Towleroad]
Gal Gadot wore Ferragamo to a Netflix event. [RCFA]

Can someone please help this poor overworked sausage? Poor Princess Kate has done three events in four days! She’s working her wiglet to the nub. The Princess of Wales stepped out today for the grand reopening of the National Portrait Gallery. Kate is the patron of the NPG, and the renovation/refurbishment of the gallery was costly and time-consuming. Apparently, the actual building hadn’t been “redeveloped” since 1896. The refurbishment also means that the gallery has put a notable portrait of Prince Harry and Prince William in storage, so as to not offend Kate’s delicate sensibilities. She is not even capable of looking at a portrait of her brother-in-law!

For this grand reopening – Kate was only there for about an hour – Kate wore a new £450 Self Portrait dress. It’s giving knockoff Chanel, right? There’s also something about it which feels… I don’t know, like she’s going so hard on the Diana cosplay these days whenever we see her. Something’s up. Hilariously, Kate also wore her Aquazurra heels, the same ones she wore a day before the coronation. The same ones she saw the Duchess of Sussex wear repeatedly. Meghan loved wearing her Aquazzura heels, so of course Kate had to run out and buy the exact same style. Honest to God, I halfway expected Kate to step out today in Dior, to tie herself to the rumors that Meghan will sign with Dior. I bet she’s mad that she missed her chance.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Here are some photos from Monday’s Order of the Garter service in Windsor. The service was held at St. George’s Chapel, the larger chapel on the Windsor Castle estate. It’s an annual thing, and all of the knights of the Garter are invited and there’s some kind of secret meeting or something. Prince Andrew is a knight of the Garter, but he was told to stay home. Princess Anne and Queen Camilla are both ladies of the Garter, and Prince William and Prince Edward are both knights of the Garter. They were all in attendance, but the foreign stranger-knights of the Garter (like King Felipe and King Willem-Alexander) skipped. This was King Charles’s first Order of the Garter service as sovereign.

No one ever mentions this, but the Princess of Wales is not a lady of the Garter. While I get that she’s just a married-in royal, she’s wife to the future king and mother of the future-future king. You would think that after eleven-years-plus of marriage, they would invite her into this special club. They have not. Sophie’s not a lady of the Garter either. Both Kate and Sophie showed up to support their spouses though.

Kate wore a polka-dotted Alessandra Rich dress with a matching Philip Treacy hat. I looked it up – this is not a repeat of the Rich dress she wore to Ascot last year. That Ascot dress had bigger “dots” and a ruffle across the chest. The Rich dress this week had no chest ruffle, but did have a similar cut to other Rich dresses Kate has worn. Interestingly, I think this is the first time Kate has worn Alessandra Rich since Rich gave that interview late last year – Rich said all the right things, but I definitely got the vibe that she doesn’t think Kate is the right model for her designs. Rich would prefer to see women wear her dresses with some humor and lightness. Kate wears these prissy, overworked, beruffled pieces with too much earnestness, like she really thinks this is high fashion.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Prince William was really feeling himself over the weekend. His office made arrangements to completely overshadow King Charles’s first Trooping the Colour parade in two ways. One, William released two Father’s Day photos with his children, and he made sure to get the photos to the newspapers in time to make almost all of the Sunday papers. Secondly, William gave a big exclusive interview to Roya Nikkhah at the Sunday Times, wherein William made news by talking about housing homeless folks on Duchy land and he previewed his big new project, which will be launched in the coming days/weeks. As I said yesterday, I cannot wait to see how King Charles punishes William for all of this thunder-stealing. Well, it’s begun already. From the Mail’s Eden Confidential column:

Prince William’s decision to give his first big interview as heir to the throne on the weekend of his father’s inaugural King’s Birthday Parade has put the cat among the pigeons at the palace, I hear. In the interview, with The Sunday Times, the Prince talked about his ambitions to ‘end’ homelessness and failed to mention King Charles’s efforts to provide social housing when he was in charge of the Duchy of Cornwall.

William caused further tensions by releasing a sweet Father’s Day photograph of him with his children in time for the Sunday papers.

‘The timing of the interview will certainly have raised eyebrows at Buckingham Palace,’ a senior former palace official tells me. ‘The interview and the Father’s Day picture have blown His Majesty off the front pages on the weekend of his first King’s Birthday Parade. It could have been sequenced better, especially given that the Duchy social-housing initiative isn’t being launched for a while yet.’

Media management is a thorny subject in the Royal Family. In his controversial memoir, Spare, Prince Harry claimed he and his brother, William, were restricted in how many public engagements they could undertake.

[From The Daily Mail]

Oh, William “failed to mention King Charles’s efforts to provide social housing when he was in charge of the Duchy of Cornwall” as well? Probably because… Charles wasn’t known for giving away free housing to unhoused people? Charles ran the Duchy like a profitable real estate empire (which it is), not a charity. Anyway, “It could have been sequenced better” is definitely Britspeak for “the King is mad as a hornet.” I find this curious too: “especially given that the Duchy social-housing initiative isn’t being launched for a while yet.” William made it sound like it would launch within the next week or two – was his interview just another promise to be keen? And if the launch isn’t for a few months, why did William give the interview? It’s a lot like Kate and Chelsea Flower Show mess – William did all of this knowing that he was going to overshadow his father.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Millie Pilkington for Kensington Palace.

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Bebe Rexha kicked off her “Best F*n Night of My Life” tour in Phoenix, AZ on May 31, and she has US tour dates throughout June before starting a European leg in late July. Sunday night she had a show in New York, so I feel I must apologize on behalf of my city because she most definitely did NOT have the best f*n night of her life with us. There she was performing on stage (and sporting another one of her fabulous jumpsuits) and then some nutjob threw his phone at her head, knocking her to the ground and sending her to the hospital:

Singer Bebe Rexha was rushed off stage after a phone hit her in the head at a concert in New York on Sunday night.

Disturbing footage shot by Alex Chavez from the concert reveals a phone emerging from the crowd and hitting Rexha on the face, who then collapses on her knees to the stage floor. Crew members are seen rushing out to help her.

Rexha’s performance was at the Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York as part of her “Best F’n Night of My Life” tour. New York Police were notified of the assault and a preliminary investigation “determined that a 27-year-old male intentionally threw a cell phone” at Rexha. He was taken into custody on scene and arrested while EMS removed Rexha to a hospital. She is in stable condition.

“This is Bebe Rexha being rushed out of the concert venue here in NYC after someone threw a f—ing phone and hit her face as she was leaving the stage. We were all having a hell of a good time and so was Bebe, we were all having a blast, I mean who would even do that??? We hope you’re ok,” Bernaud tweeted.

And then there was this update later in the day:

Bebe Rexha has uploaded a brief video on her TikTok page, that shows her face bruised and sporting a bandage. She’s singing a line from her hit single “I’m Good” and the caption reads, “I’m okay you guys.”

27-year-old Nicolas Malvagna has been arrested and charged with assault for allegedly throwing the phone at Rexha, according to New York police.

[From Variety]

Bebe has updated her TikTok and Instagram with short messages that she’s okay, accompanied by some close ups of the injury. The phone hit her in the eye! In one of the photos you can see the gash (over the remnants of her stage makeup) and in another she has a bandage on. As of this writing she hasn’t said anything directly on her socials about stitches, but Rolling Stone is saying that a family member reported she had to have three. There’s been no word yet on whether her shows this week will be affected at all. I’m glad the guy’s been arrested and charged, and I really hope they make his so-called defense public. What was the endgame here? I don’t get it. He pays to attend her concert, hurls his phone at her and gets booked for assault. What’s the message or win for him? Or maybe I’m assuming too much that there was even any thought behind it at all.

Most of all we wish Bebe a speedy recovery.

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Following the announcement that Spotify and the Sussexes had parted ways, there was a good deal of gloom and doom as British “experts” tried to convince the British public that Harry and Meghan were in danger of going broke and that Brand Sussex is in shambles. What’s funny about that storyline is that the British media could only keep up that pretense for a few days before they had to admit that, actually, Harry and Meghan are fine and they’ll probably continue to build their empire post-Spotify. They’ve all convinced themselves that Meghan is going to bring back The Tig (she should, but these people just want her content) and that Meghan is going to be even more powerful now that she’s signed up with Ari Emmanuel at WME. Speaking of, the Mail had this bizarre exclusive about how “everyone” in LA is talking about how Meghan will bounce back from the Spotify mess. Apparently, everyone thinks she’s on the verge of signing up as a brand ambassador for Dior. Which is what I’ve been saying for a while, that Meghan should do that?

As rebrandings go, this one is being handled with the precision of a military campaign. When the news ricocheted around the world that Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast had been axed – amid bitter accusations that the Duchess and husband Harry were ‘grifters’ (American for ‘con-artists’) – her high-octane Hollywood team were already on a war footing. Headed by powerhouse agent Ari Emanuel, the charismatic chief of talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME), the mission to re-invent Meghan is already well under way, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

If the rumours swirling around LA are true, she may be on the brink of signing a major deal with French couture house Dior to make her a face of the company, alongside global stars such as Rihanna and Jennifer Lawrence.

‘Meghan is all anyone is talking about,’ a prominent Beverly Hills socialite said last night. ‘There have been rumours for weeks that she’s about to sign a deal with Dior which has put the gossip mill into overdrive. If she pulls that off, then no one will remember that her silly little podcast got cancelled after one season.’

‘We knew the Spotify announcement was coming,’ a source at WME told me. ‘It might be a shock to everyone else but we’ve been working on the rebranding of Meghan for weeks. Ari is the best in the business when it comes to corporate deals and making money. He’s excited to be representing Meghan and has thrown all his energy into it. The offers have been pouring in, including from other podcast platforms.’

Reputation crisis expert Eric Schiffer says Team Meghan will use the drama to their advantage. ‘These guys were already on a war footing because they knew the Spotify announcement was coming. Ari will have a strategic and tactical battle plan in place to link her with sophisticated brand partners, like Dior. This is an opportunity to distance Meghan from the negativity of the past. It’s no accident that she didn’t go to the Coronation, that she didn’t show up in London alongside Prince Harry when he was in court recently. Meghan is wise to distance herself from her husband’s toxic dramas. This is a woman who constantly moves forward. This is about building a global brand. There will be some big deals announced soon.’

One insider who used to work for Oprah Winfrey – who turned a daytime talk show into a billion-dollar brand – said: ‘Meghan could end up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Is it just me or was this weirdly complimentary from the Mail? Yes, they got their jabs in, but the larger point of the story is that Meghan is fine, she’s got a great team at WME, Ari Emmanuel is going to get her lots of deals and brand ambassadorships and the Sussexes will remain fabulously rich. Now, is a Dior ambassadorship coming? I hope so, truly. I’ve felt like that’s what she should have been doing for a few years now, she should get some big-money brand-ambassadorships with tasteful ad campaigns. Dior would be a good fit. So would Ralph Lauren, honestly.

And no, Meghan wasn’t avoiding the UK because of her “brand.” She literally doesn’t give a f–k about those awful people who abused her. It’s hilarious how they’re still grasping for a “reason” why Meghan didn’t bother coming to the stupid Chubbly – she didn’t want to go, so she stayed home with her babies, end of.

Update: So, all of the eleventy billion stories about “Meghan will sign with Dior, no, both Harry and Meghan will sign with Dior” are obviously horsesh-t. The Sussexes’ people denied the story, which means that – gasp – the Mail doesn’t have sources close to Harry and Meghan, nor does the Mail have industry sources in LA? Shocking!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Cover Images.

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Dean McDermott and Tori Spelling have had a rocky marriage for many years. When I was looking through our archives I laughed when I saw stories with near-identical headlines, that they both wanted to divorce each other–but neither one could afford to. It’s not that funny for two people to be unhappily stuck together because of eye-watering debt. It’s just amusing to me that they each tried to run with that story in the press within six months of each other. Who can’t afford to divorce whom? Well, it looks like Dean was finally ready to pull the trigger, affordable or not. He posted an announcement of their split to Instagram and then deleted it hours later. Did he have it queued up in drafts and post it by accident?

Dean McDermott took to Instagram on Saturday to share that he and his wife of 17 years, Tori Spelling, are splitting up. However, hours later, the Canadian actor deleted the post.

McDermott, who has been married to the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum since 2006, announced their separation to his 138,000 followers in a post on his Instagram. The two share children Liam, 16, Stella, 15, Hattie, 11, Finn, 10, and Beau, 5.

“It’s with great sadness and a very very heavy heart that after 18 years together and 5 amazing children, that @torispelling and I have decided to go our separate ways, and start a new journey of our own,” McDermott’s statement read. “We will continue to work together as loving parents and guide and love our children through this difficult time. We ask that you all respect our privacy as we take this time to surround our family with love and work our way through this. Thank you all for your support and kindness.”

He concluded with a prayer hands emoji.

Spelling’s Instagram page has no indication of the duo’s split. Just one day ago, the actress shared a video of the family celebrating daughter Stella’s birthday at the Beverly Hilton, with McDermott in attendance. Set to the famed Weezer song “Beverly Hills,” the family can be seen celebrating poolside and in a penthouse suite with champagne and sweets. They family gathered together for a poolside video which was shared in Spelling’s reel.

Earlier this week, the family was all smiles as they appeared together at The Stand Up For Kids Gala at Universal Studios Hollywood. With the kids by their sides, Spelling and McDermott gave no indication that they would formally announce their split just 5 days later.

[From Yahoo!]

Okay, that statement is boilerplate and has “publicist” written all over it. This suggests to me that Dean has hired an attorney and is ready to file or has filed already. More interesting is why he deleted it so soon after posting it. A source (likely from Tori’s camp) ran to People to say the announcement was “out of the blue,” so Tori has apparently been blindsided. Although given how bad their relationship struggles have been, I don’t know what level of denial you’d have to be living in to not see something like this coming. That’s like, the ninth circle of denial. The same level of denial to continuously live beyond your means, maybe? Dean’s contributed to their money problems, too–I’m not laying the blame at only Tori’s feet here. They were both, to use one of my favorite words, feckless with their spending. Their marriage was beyond toxic and I think the writing’s been on the wall for years. It is weird that they’ve been hanging out as a family over the weekend and then Dean goes to post the Instagram on Monday morning. That’s not the usual “nothing to see here” play of the Friday afternoon breakup announcement. He knew, or his publicist knew, that it would get attention, and they wanted it that way–if it wasn’t an accidental post. But I don’t think it was, just a hunch. I think he wants to control the narrative for some reason. I have a feeling this is going to get messy.

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During the pandemic, the production of Mission Impossible 7 basically had to get special permission from the Italian government to shoot exterior scenes all around Rome while everything else was in lockdown. I still remember those photos too – Rome was at a virtual stand-still, with the Italian government enforcing strict lockdown procedures, and there was Tom Cruise, barking orders at everyone in the middle of Rome. Well, Cruise brought the world premiere of MI7 to Rome, and they took over the Spanish Steps and the Auditorium della Conciliazione last night. The photos are beautiful, honestly. But y’all know this cast is tired. They’ve been working on MI: Dead Reckoning Parts One and Two for three f–king years.

I’m including photos of Tom solo and with the cast. Tom and Hayley Atwell reportedly dated for a bit, but I don’t think they’re still together. They made a point of posing together though. Fashion notes: Rebecca Ferguson wore Emporio Armani, a pretty great dress, albeit very simple. Hayley wore a slinky black dress but I dislike her “wet look” hair. Vanessa Kirby looks the best, imo. I love a blonde in a gold dress, and this looks amazing on her.

The reviews are already coming in for this movie and they’re overwhelmingly positive. I guess there’s still a lot of love for this franchise and for Tom as Ethan Hunt. We’ll see.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.