Here are some photos of Prince Harry arriving at court today, where he will testify against the Mirror Group Newspapers. Harry wasn’t in court yesterday, and MGN’s lawyer threw a tantrum about it in court, because (I believe) the British media had convinced themselves that Harry was going to appear and every outlet had sent photographers and videographers to stake out the court. But from what I can see, Harry’s first day in court was always supposed to be today, the 6th. Anyway, these photos go hard – there was a carnival atmosphere with all of the photographers and media outlets vying to get their shots of Harry. Several outlets set up live streams, like it was the arrival of a king. Don’t tell me Harry-arriving-at-court outsold the coronation?

This will be the first time a British prince/royal has testified in court in more than a hundred years. Harry will testify about how the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror hacked into his phone messages, stalked his girlfriends, paid off his friends and made his life a living hell since he was a child. As you can imagine, the Windsors are backing their friends, the British tabloid media.

Prince Harry’s fresh courtroom drama is bound to broaden the gulf between him and King Charles and Prince William, palace sources told Page Six. The renegade prince has flown to London to take the stand in the Daily Mirror hacking case — making him the first royal ever to give evidence in the witness box.

Asked what his estranged family must make of Harry’s participation in the case, one highly placed palace source said: “I can’t imagine anyone is pleased,” adding they will be “privately bracing themselves.”

Another royal insider said: “Harry would see himself as fighting their battle too, to protect the reputation of the monarchy. But certainly, they [the royal family] avoid confrontation with the media in most instances. And litigation is so lengthy. stressful and unpredictable, not to mention expensive. You just have no idea what direction the other side is going to go in on, and what they will dredge up.”

Lawyer Andrew Green KC, representing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), has already told the court that many of the stories published about Harry “came from information disclosed by or on behalf of royal households or members of the royal family.”

“There’s a damn good reason why the royal family should feel uncomfortable about this,” added the royal insider.

Noted writer and historian Hugo Vickers pointed out that unlike in his interviews with friends like Oprah Winfrey and Tom Bradby, Harry will have to answer any and all questions while under oath.

“It turns it into another circus,” Vickers told Page Six. “He’s got time to come over [to England] and cause trouble, but he doesn’t have time to see his family and try to sort out any of the big issues. He’s also subjecting himself to the possibility of an aggressive council to ask him a lot of disagreeable questions he is obliged to answer, putting himself on the line.”

[From Page Six]

LMAO to all of this – the suggestion that the morally bankrupt Windsors don’t want to sue the tabloids because it’s too expensive… as opposed to the Windsors seeing the tabloids as their partners and part of their communications. It will also be interesting to see how often the Mirror Group throws the Windsors under the bus as they could claim that their info comes from palace briefings and not hacking, which of course is why the Windsors are so “concerned” – their tabloid partners have zero loyalty. And this: “He’s got time to come over [to England] and cause trouble, but he doesn’t have time to see his family and try to sort out any of the big issues” – Charles literally fled the country specifically to avoid Harry.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

Did anyone believe that Prince Harry’s testimony in court against the Mirror Group Newspapers would be accurately portrayed within the British media? No, of course not. We’ve seen enough from the British media establishment to understand that they feel like they’re all in this together. The stones it takes for Harry to not only go up against one newspaper, but the entire media landscape, the whole rotten system, is pretty extraordinary. Still, I had hope that the American media would do a more thorough and fair job of covering the events. That… has not been the case. The New York Times had an analysis piece about Harry’s testimony in court and wouldn’t you know, they’re relying more on “wow, Harry is hurting his reputation in Britain!” GMAFB. From Mark Landler and Megan Specia’s reporting for the NYT:

Harry’s declining popularity: For Harry, who now largely supports himself, the litigation has been expensive and time-consuming. People who know him say he did not expect, when he brought the suits, that they would drag on for so many years. Going to war against the tabloids has not helped his image in Britain, where his popularity has already been tarnished by his bitter split with his father and older brother, William.

Peter Hunt’s comments: “He is taking action over alleged illegality, alleged abuse of power,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. “That is quite a courageous move, which is not an adjective often seen next to the name Harry.” Since Harry left Britain in 2020, he has gone a long way toward taking back control of his narrative from the tabloids. Between his tell-all memoir, “Spare,” and a Netflix documentary with Meghan, Harry will have little new information to disclose on the stand, Mr. Hunt predicted.

Royal watchers claim Harry is polarizing: Some royal watchers said it was a sign of Harry’s polarizing reputation in Britain that the media coverage before the trial focused on whether testifying would diminish his stature rather than on the journalism issues at stake. “The kernel of what he’s trying to do is being watered down,” said Mr. Hunt, the former BBC correspondent. “It’s almost as if phone hacking is priced in,” he said, adding, “it wasn’t priced in if you were the victim.”

[From The NYT]

“Going to war against the tabloids has not helped his image in Britain, where his popularity has already been tarnished by his bitter split with his father and older brother, William.” Ah, yes – the split was so bitter that Charles spent months demanding Harry show up for his coronation. And Harry’s “image” being hurt after he revealed that his brother physically assaulted him in his home says more about Britain than Harry. It continues to fascinate me as we watch the Windsors act as if the tabloids are an extension of the royal family, and the tabloids speak as if they’re part of the family too. What an unholy alliance. Anyway, it’s disgusting that to watch the New York Times once again carry water for the worst people and the most nonsensical arguments in the UK.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

Leonardo DiCaprio is on vacation with 22-year-old model Meghan Roche. [Just Jared]
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is so beautiful. These pics are from last week’s Never Have I Ever Season 4 premiere. [Go Fug Yourself]
Would you eat an ice cream sandwich made out of McDonald’s hash browns and McFlurries? I would eat those two items together, just not in a sandwich. [Dlisted]
Kylie Jenner & Timothee Chalamet were photographed together. [LaineyGossip]
Is Ted Lasso really over? [Pajiba]
Kelly Rowland wore Saint Laurent in NYC. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Review of The Boogeyman. [Jezebel]
Kayla Simmons is the world’s sexiest volleyball player. [Egotastic]
Emmy Rossum is playing Tom Holland’s mother??? [Buzzfeed]
Margot Robbie just doesn’t have interesting style. [RCFA]
Caitlyn Jenner isn’t giving up her (stupid) career in politics. [Towleroad]

Leonardo DiCaprio is vacationing in Ibiza with 22-year-old model Meghan Roche – check out the photos here: https://t.co/OLqjhHBeru

— JustJared.com (@JustJared) June 4, 2023

Graydon Carter is 73 years old. He was the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair for decades, and years after he left VF, he started Air Mail, a weekly digital magazine which – I assume – is trying to become the next Atlantic or New Yorker, but only digital. To promote Air Mail, Carter chatted with the Telegraph during the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a long and winding conversation about the VF years, turning Vanity Fair’s Oscar party into a huge centerpiece for the magazine, American politics, British politics and… the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Some highlights from the piece:

When he knew Donald Trump in the 1990s: ‘He wasn’t without his charm, but a real hustler. And his hands were much too small for his body. If you want your hands to look bigger, have small cufflinks, but he had enormous cufflinks that made his hands look even smaller. Then his cuffs were so big that it looked like his hands were swimming in the rest of the shirt…. I never thought Trump would be this bad. I knew he’d be venal, corrupt, vulgar, but I didn’t think he’d be this.’ He thinks the American voters will stop him getting back in, but then he didn’t think they’d go for it the first time.

On British politics: ‘I love British politics because the stakes are so low, but the bitterness and infighting are so high. Britain doesn’t have the economy of California, but it still thinks like it’s after World War Two when there was Russian and British conflict. But I don’t think Putin could find Britain on a map. Journalists must have loved Boris Johnson, he was just spectacular copy. Trump is much more evil. Boris lied, but with better diction. What kind of a journalist writes two columns, one pro-Brexit and one anti-Brexit?’

His thoughts on the British monarchy: ‘I have no interest in the royals whatsoever, but I think for the British they’re like the way Disneyland needs Mickey and Goofy and Pluto, because they’re part of the narrative and that’s what people come to see. In Britain, if you take away the Royal family it becomes like a small Middle Eastern country. It’s like the Magic United Kingdom. I love it when things go wrong for them. When things go right it’s boring.’

On Harry & Meghan: ‘Harry and Meghan are just fascinating concepts. They’ve done something they’ll live to regret, which is their children have no relatives. They have no cousins that they see, or uncles or aunts, and they don’t see grandparents, except for one. That will come back to haunt them at a certain point. Montecito is gorgeous but it’s God’s waiting room: there is nothing, nothing, nothing to do. It’s a 40-minute drive from LA. There can’t be many kids there because young families can’t afford it. It’s a lonely, beautiful place.

On the Sussexes’ paparazzi chase in New York: ‘I’ve lived in New York for 50 years and you can’t go faster than three miles an hour. When I first read about it I thought, “That doesn’t look right.” They have too much attention. For people like that, unavailability is your greatest asset. If you’re out there too much, the public has a chance to get sick of you. I think they’ve made every wrong move you can make.’

[From The Telegraph]

“They don’t see grandparents, except for one…” One of the grandfathers barely bothered to see them in the first place, and the other grandfather is a lunatic being paid to smear his daughter. Meghan has family in California too, we just don’t hear about them because Meghan respects their privacy. Carter’s idea of “family” is… very white and royal. And honestly, Carter is complaining about how there’s nothing to do in Montecito – as in, the Sussexes aren’t being pap’d constantly and they have a lot of privacy there – while at the same time bashing them for not being unavailable enough, not having more mystique.

All that being said, he’s no royalist: “In Britain, if you take away the Royal family it becomes like a small Middle Eastern country. It’s like the Magic United Kingdom. I love it when things go wrong for them…” It’s true. He’s also right about British politics.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Elliot Page has written a memoir, Pageboy, which has to be one of my favorite book titles in recent memory. It’s perfect. I’m so happy Elliot is telling his story, and seems like he’s in a really good place. He’s on the cover of People to promote Pageboy, and he shared some juicy details from the book with them. One of the juiciest stories? Elliot described having an affair with Kate Mara while she was dating Max Minghella in 2014. Elliot says it revealed a pattern in his life where he was attracted to unavailable people.

“The first person I fell for after my heart was broken was Kate Mara,” Page writes. “She had a boyfriend at the time, the lovely and talented Max Minghella.”

Page goes on to describe their romance, during which Page was filming 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. (“Kate has read the book,” Page says. Mara is appearing with Page at a book event in Los Angeles in June.) Page writes that Minghella was supportive of Mara exploring her feelings for Page. “I never thought I could be in love with two people and now I know I can,” Page says Mara told him.

“This was right after I’d come out as gay and it was a time of exploration and also heartbreak,” Page says. “I think my relationship, or whatever you want to call it with Kate, very much encapsulates a certain dynamic that I consistently found myself in, which was falling for people that — I think a lot of us do this — who aren’t fully available. And the sort of safety in that and the highs and the lows and the serotonin bump, and then it goes away.”

“And I think that is definitely a pattern in my life,” he adds. Page says he and Mara are still close. “I think the love and care that we have for each other is its very own special thing. Separate from the intimacy that I write about.”

[From People]

I’m impressed that Max Minghella was cool with Kate and Elliot having a relationship. I feel like a lot of guys would respond in a territorial way or feel emasculated. It sounds like Kate told Max early on, but I’ll have to read the book to learn the full story. We are very eager in American culture to pass judgment on infidelity or polyamorous relationships. But I try to approach stories like this with an attitude of curiosity rather than judgment. It sounds like Kate and Elliot’s relationship was emotionally intense and meaningful for them both.

It’s perceptive of Elliot to realize that he was drawn to people who were not fully available. And I think that pattern also makes sense for people who are subjected to societal programming and shame for their gender identities or sexual orientation. (Or for other things, too.) If you spend your life believing that you are unlovable, or that you won’t be accepted for who you truly are, of course you’ll be attracted to people who confirm that belief by not being fully available. That’s what society tells you that you deserve. And he describes the “safety” in that dynamic, which might seem counterintuitive, but I know exactly what he’s talking about. It feels safe because it feels familiar. And if the person you’re seeing isn’t fully available, you don’t have to be either. I think it’s sweet that Elliot and Kate are still friends. It’s cool when exes can be friends like that, and it isn’t always possible.

Elliot also shares a blind item in his book about a famous actor verbally harassing him at a party back in 2014, when he had come out as gay. The actor said some vile things to him, including, “you aren’t gay, that doesn’t exist. You’re just afraid of men.” Multiple people saw and heard it go down. I wish Elliot had named names and put this guy on blast, but I also get why he didn’t. Hollywood fronts like it’s such a progressive industry. It’s not. It reflects American culture at large, which still privileges some people more than others. So it’s easy for powerful people in Hollywood to get away with being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and so on. That’s basically how it’s always been.

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Photos of Elliot and Kate together are from 2014 and credit: PacificCoastNews/Avalon

Queen Elizabeth II was in very poor health in her final year, and likely in poor health for the better part of a decade. The noticeable shift came in the fall of 2021, when QEII was hospitalized overnight and then her hospitalization was covered up by her courtiers. After that, she began quiet-quitting huge chunks of the job of head of state. Some claimed that she had a form of bone marrow cancer. Some claimed she was merely off-balance and prone to falling and was far too ableist to use a wheelchair full time. What kills me about all of the back-and-forth about QEII’s health is that the courtiers consistently used her poor health as a cudgel against the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, yet no one was supposed to question why they got a severely ill (and perhaps senile) queen to “sign off” on sh-t like “ensuring Camilla is known as queen” and “making sure Andrew has the money to pay off his rape victim.” Well, guess what these people are crying about once again?

A friend of the late Queen Elizabeth has dismissed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s reported decision to stop spilling royal secrets, saying the couple should have held their peace in the last months of the queen’s life when it was clear the queen was dying and was in great physical pain. The friend’s furious response came after a story in British tabloid The Sun claimed that Harry and Meghan will stop making content slamming the royal family, with an anonymous source saying: “That period of their life is over as there is nothing left to say.”

The bereaved friend’s outraged reaction represents a rare insight into the closely guarded and highly secretive circumstances surrounding the death of Elizabeth, who died in Scotland in September 2022 as a result, The Daily Beast understands, of bone cancer.

The friend of the late queen’s told The Daily Beast: “For the last years of her life, certainly from when her husband died [in April 2021], the queen was in a lot of pain. In the final months, of course, it got very much worse; by the time of the Platinum Jubilee (June 2022), she couldn’t see very much, she couldn’t hear very much, and she was easily confused. She barely moved from her apartments in Windsor Castle. Appearing on the balcony at the jubilee required a titanic effort.”

“That was the time for Harry and Meghan to bite their tongue. Instead they produced this unending stream of incredibly hurtful films and interviews attacking her life’s work. For Harry to announce he was writing a memoir when his grandmother was not just recently widowed but actually dying herself, as he must have known she was—well, the cruelty of it takes the breath away. The idea that they are now going to take a vow of silence after all the damage they have done, even if it was true, which I very much doubt, will do nothing to assuage the anger and disgust some of her friends feel about what they did to the queen in her final years.”

Although the palace refused to comment at the time, and her death certificate simply cited “old age,” her friend Gyles Brandreth subsequently reported that the queen had been suffering from bone marrow cancer at the time of her death. The bereaved friend told The Daily Beast they did not know the exact type of bone cancer with which the queen was afflicted, but said they saw no reason why Brandreth should be incorrect.

Sources have told The Daily Beast that she also found it increasingly difficult to focus or concentrate on complex matters for more than a few minutes, and that the ongoing pain of her condition was partly responsible for her withdrawal from many aspects of public life. Although she was never photographed in a wheelchair, she used one regularly to get around the palace, a source previously told The Daily Beast.

[From The Daily Beast]

Let’s recap – at the same time that Prince Andrew was facing a civil trial for raping Virginia Giuffre, at the same time that Charles was trying to achieve his goal of having his mother proclaim his drunk wife “queen consort,” at the same time that William carried on with his rose bushes, that throughout it all, a very fragile, cancer-ridden, grief-stricken and perhaps senile 90-something queen was most affected by her grandson announcing that he would write a memoir? THAT was her biggest concern, that was her biggest drama? The further we go on this, we’ll have monarchists saying, with a straight face, that they can’t believe Harry would do X, Y and Z, all while his grandmother (the head of state) couldn’t walk, focus, see or hear for a year. And then they’ll turn around and say “but of course she was well enough to make her feelings known about how Camilla should be called ‘queen’.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

Bebe Rexha hit a major milestone earlier this year when she became the longest charting female on not one but two Billboard charts, Hot Country and Dance/Electronic (and for Dance/Electronic that was at #1). Fantastic, right? But sadly she’s in the headlines for a different long charting story: that most of the suggestions for her in the TikTok search bar are some variation of “weight” and “fat.” This has been a broken record issue for Bebe to deal with, and she’s owning it like she has about her health issues. Bebe recently tweeted two photos, one a mirror selfie with her shirt up with the caption “Yes I’m in my fat era” and another of a screenshot with searches related to her weight. She’s been hitting the promo tour for her new self-titled album, and last week she sat down with Jennifer Hudson to talk about body positivity:

Bebe Rexha is speaking out against the body shamers out there.

The Grammy-nominated music artist took to Twitter to post a screenshot of searches that showed her name and the word “fat,” writing, “Yes I’m in my fat era and what?”

Rexha also posted a photo of herself holding up her shirt in a bathroom mirror to show her stomach.

This isn’t the first time that Rexha has called out the search bar on TikTok. In mid-April, she posted a screenshot of it to Twitter that showed people were looking up “Bebe Rexha weight.”

“Seeing that search bar is so upsetting,” she tweeted at the time. “I’m not mad cause it’s true. I did gain weight. But it just sucks. Thank you to all the people who love me no matter what.”

Rexha recently opened up about how she’s impacted when people discuss her body, while in conversation with Jennifer Hudson. “Listen, we’re in the public eye, so that’s bound to happen,” she told the talk show host, adding, “But we gotta just be positive and just show people love.”

“I was a lot thinner and I did gain some weight–that comes with the territory,” Rexha said, after talking about her recent polycystic ovary syndrome diagnosis. “I’m not mad about it because it is true, but when you see things like that, it does mess with you.”

“[PCOS] is one of the leading causes of why women gain weight and are obese,” she said. “I literally jumped, like, 30 pounds so quickly, maybe a little bit more.”

“You don’t know what somebody’s going through, what they’re going through in their life, so it kind of is tough,” she added. “But I feel like we’re in 2023… we should not be talking about people’s weight.”

[From People]

Bebe is really quite delightful in the interview, and I thought Jennifer Hudson did a great job in teeing up the issue for Bebe to talk about, and then moving on to questions about her music. Did you know she studied opera? And can play the trumpet? Those should be in the TikTok search bar! The only thing I wished Jennifer had followed up on more was asking about the Albanian music Bebe said she grew up with.

So to echo Bebe’s own words, she’s in her fat era. And what? Some of that is due to PCOS (and thank you for sharing that, yes I will be asking my doctor to screen me for it) and some of that is because Bebe, like most homo sapiens, likes to eat food. Even when she was a size 8 Bebe was vocal about designers refusing to dress her. (You know who else was a size 8? Marilyn Monroe.) Can we finally move on from talking about the fact that she’s a different size today from other sizes she’s been in her life, to talking about the string of fabulous jumpsuits she’s been wearing?

Yes I’m in my fat era and what? pic.twitter.com/d3T4od8JYE

— Bebe Rexha (@BebeRexha) June 2, 2023

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photos credit: Julie Edwards/Avalon and via Instagram

While King Charles was “Prince of Wales” for nearly seven decades, he only bought a home in Wales in 2007, the year before his 60th birthday. He purchased Llwynywermod, a farmhouse on a 192-acre estate, through the Duchy of Cornwall, meaning it’s a Duchy property and not a personal property for Charles. He has the same arrangement with his Highgrove home – that too was folded into the Duchy. When he became king last year, he began “renting” those two properties from the Duchy, which is now controlled by Prince William. Well, now it looks like Charles is trying to “downsize” his real estate portfolio, and as such, he’s giving up Llwynywermod. No more annual trips to the Welsh countryside.

King Charles has given up his home in Wales as he begins the process of trimming the costs of his multiple residences, The Telegraph can disclose. His Majesty bought Llwynywermod in 2007 via the Duchy of Cornwall, paying £1.2 million for the farmhouse near Llandovery in Carmarthenshire.

When he was Prince of Wales he used it as his base during regular visits to the nation, but after the title passed to his son, Prince William, he will no longer spend as much time in the region. Royal sources said the King remained “passionate” about Wales but had decided to give up the property because it was “unlikely” he would be able to use it in the same way as before.

With the Coronation out of the way, the King and his aides have turned their attention to what to do with the various homes owned by or used by the King, which include Highgrove, Birkhall, Clarence House, Sandringham and Balmoral, as well as official residences such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

Since the Duchy of Cornwall was passed to Prince William, the King has been paying rent on Llwynywermod, which sits on a 192-acre estate. Buckingham Palace confirmed that the King had given notice to the Duchy earlier this year that he would be giving up the lease, which is due to expire later in the summer.

Other properties on the estate are available as holiday rentals when the King is not in residence, and it is likely that Llwynywermod will be let out commercially, either for holidays or on a long-term lease.

A spokesman for the Prince of Wales said he had no plans to establish his own home in Wales, preferring to stay in hotels to help out the local economy wherever he happened to be.

The holiday cottages on the Llwynywermod estate cost between £550 and £1,200 per week depending on the season, meaning the commercial rate to rent the King’s larger property on a long-term lease would be around £2,000 per month.

[From The Telegraph]

Let’s be real, he barely spent any time there and purchasing Llwynywermod was always more of a performative gesture, the idea that he should have a “home in Wales.” So it’s funny that William can’t even mirror that performative gesture now that he’s Prince of Wales. “He had no plans to establish his own home in Wales, preferring to stay in hotels to help out the local economy wherever he happened to be…” I bet William is used to checking into hotels, huh. And doesn’t it also help out the local economy to have what amounts to a royal patron in the area, a prince who employs locals on his estate, someone who puts money into the local economy by renovating a local estate’s cottages and encouraging tourism? Oh, well. Anyway, it’s weird to think about William having access to the vast Duchy of Cornwall portfolio and he’s still throwing a tantrum about wanting Royal Lodge.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

This week is apparently all about Prince Harry’s lawsuit against the Mirror Group. He’s suing them for phone hacking, and the final pre-trial motions and hearings happened several weeks back. This week, the trial begins and Harry will testify. It was always known that he would show up to testify in person, in London this week, and his testimony was always scheduled to start on Tuesday, the 6th. The British papers still made a big f–king deal about how they “expected” him to show up for court today for his lawyer’s opening statement. Apparently, Harry isn’t there. His lawyer told the court that Harry flew in “late last night,” likely because he wanted to at least spend part of the day with his daughter on her birthday. The Mirror’s lawyer told the court that “we’re deeply troubled that the key witness isn’t available on day one of his own trial.” GMAFB. The Guardian had a broad overview about how historic this will be:

When Prince Harry gives evidence in the Mirror phone-hacking trial on Tuesday, he will become the first senior royal to be cross-examined in court since the 19th century. Based on what happened earlier in the trial, it is unlikely the prince will enjoy the experience.

Harry will allege that journalists at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People used illegal methods including phone hacking to obtain stories about him. Mirror Group Newspapers will try to cast doubt on Harry’s evidence, his reliability and why he waited so long to bring the case.

He will be cross-examined on articles with headlines such as “Harry is a Chelsy fan” and “Hooray Harry’s dumped”, requiring him to publicly relive the breakdown of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy while under oath in a witness box and watched by the world’s media. He is also expected to be questioned about his relationship with the former Mirror editor Piers Morgan, who Harry’s legal team allege had “clear involvement and knowledge” in illegal activity, which Morgan denies.

Although the media has tended to report the Mirror phone-hacking trial through the lens of Prince Harry, he is just the most high profile of more than 100 claimants – including the singer Cheryl and the estate of George Michael – who are involved in the wider litigation.

[From The Guardian]

There will be no cameras in the courtroom, so we’ll have to rely on second-hand reports of Harry’s performance on the witness stand. I would imagine that he’s already done some work with his lawyers and with (one would assume) a mental coach and perhaps even a therapist. It’s going to be massively stressful and even people who are telling the truth and have nothing to hide will crack under the pressure of having to testify in open court. Harry also knows that, and he knows if he loses his temper or makes one mistake, that will be the only thing which gets reported. Still, I’m in awe of his bravery.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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On May 30, Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison to start serving her 11 year sentence. Even though it’s a minimum-security prison, she’ll be subjected to constant surveillance and monitoring. Which is the kind of treatment she gave her employees, as it turns out. Business Insider [via Yahoo] used this opportunity to report some details about Theranos office culture from journalist John Carrreyrou’s book Bad Blood. Carreyrou’s the one whose reporting for the Wall Street Journal blew the story wide open, and Bad Blood was published back in 2018. I’m sure it surprises no one that Elizabeth used many tactics to keep her employees working late, including ordering dinners every night that arrived after 8PM, so that employees couldn’t leave until 10 PM.

Being monitored constantly is something Elizabeth Holmes will have to get used to after finally beginning her 11-year sentence on May 30.

According to John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” the Theranos founder was obsessed with monitoring how many hours her employees were putting in, and would find ways to keep them working late.

One of these approaches involved getting dinner delivered to the Theranos office every night. However, Holmes timed the delivery between 8 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., meaning staff often weren’t leaving work until 10 p.m., according to the book.

Ordering communal dinners was reportedly one of several unusual tactics Holmes, who tried to model herself on Steve Jobs, would use to both inspire and intimidate Theranos employees.

According to the book, Holmes’ assistants would track the arrival and departure time of workers each day, while IT staff would monitor the software being on employees’ computers. She also had her team add employees on Facebook and tell Holmes what they were posting, Carreyrou wrote.

The surveillance state Holmes appeared to run at Theranos may not be too far removed from her new life at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.

According to The Journal and an inmate handbook for the Bryan camp, she will be woken at 6 a.m. daily, and face five headcounts a day.

[From Business Insider via Yahoo]

Ah, how the turn tables. (I know that’s not the expression, but it is my favorite malapropism.) The controlling boss is now subject to even more intense surveillance than what her employees experienced. I wish I could say that Holmes’s downfall changed Silicon Valley for the better. The failures of businesses like Theranos and WeWork have definitely made investors more cautious. Then the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank changed the mood even more. I lived in the Bay Area for seven years, I saw how billions of dollars just flying around changed the whole region. It all happened so quickly that it felt surreal to be there. Now San Francisco–which used to be a vibrant, fun place–is a hollowed-out shell of itself, plagued with homelessness and drug addiction. Meanwhile, the ones who made good sit at rooftop lounges drinking $21 rosemary Palomas. It’s dystopian. But the company culture issues at Bay Area startups probably still remain. The tactics of control the article describes Elizabeth using–ordering dinners to get people to stay longer, tracking how long people are logged in, following them on social media–none of that seems that abnormal to me? I guess I’ve come to expect that level of surveillance from an employer, at least in white-collar office jobs. I’m a young-ish millennial so maybe that’s why. I’d be curious to know if any of you have experienced that kind of surveillance at a startup.

Something that does make me sad is that female founders still get a really tiny amount of venture capital funding–about two percent of VC money goes to women-owned startups as of March 2023. If they do get funding, they still have to work harder to be taken seriously or to get more money raised down the line. I think Elizabeth Holmes has made it harder for other female founders to get funding because she was such a fraud and a trickster, and we all know how primed people are to believe the worst about women. I don’t have any stats to back that up, it’s just my hunch. And it’s also even more difficult for women of color to get funding. Black-owned businesses account for two percent of all VC funding, and Black women founders get less than one percent. Anyway, I wonder what will become of Elizabeth’s hair while she’s inside. Will it return to the straw-like staticky mess of her glory days?

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Embed from Getty Images