We go through this every year, and every year, I guess people are hearing it for the first time. The NFL doesn’t pay their Halftime performers. All of those times Beyonce performed at the Super Bowl, she didn’t get paid. Maroon 5 didn’t get paid. Coldplay didn’t get paid. Rihanna didn’t get paid for performing this year. The NFL will pick up expenses, especially for the staging, the pyrotechnics and the dancers. But Rihanna didn’t pick up a fat check from the NFL for her Halftime performance:

Rihanna may have put in the work, work, work, work, work at the Super Bowl LVII halftime show, but, as is customary for the mid-game spectacle, she did so for free. Though the famed halftime show often attracts the biggest names in music (everyone from Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen has graced the stage), there’s actually no paycheck involved for the headlining act.

“We do not pay the artists,” an NFL spokesperson told Forbes in 2016. “We cover expenses and production costs.”

Brian McCarthy, the NFL’s vice president of communications, confirmed to Newsweek that the league does cover “all costs associated with the show” — and while artists don’t receive an appearance fee, they are paid union scale, which is a minimum wage guaranteed by a union contract.

For many, the exposure and the chance to perform before increasingly large crowds is well worth the journey; last year’s Super Bowl was watched by 112.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen and streaming data from NBC, and this year’s match-up was poised to pull in even higher ratings, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Artists often see a boost in sales immediately after the show, as well as the chance to increase their social media followings. In a moment that’s since gone viral, Rihanna also touched up her makeup using a compact from her Fenty Beauty brand. She also topped off her beauty look with a new liquid lipstick, called the “MVP,” that launched online during halftime.

[From People]

Yeah, the exposure is a big deal, even for already well-established artists. This year, Apple Music was the main sponsor of the Halftime show, and sales of Rihanna’s (old) hits have gone though the roof. She’s also getting a huge spike in streams on Spotify. AND her Fenty beauty line has seen an immediate spike in sales too. According to Variety, Rihanna’s Spotify streams spiked 640% in the US, and Apple Music reports a 331% spike in listeners.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.

For months now, Buckingham Palace has released a steady drip of news about King Charles’s coronation in May. We’ve gotten news on the new gold carriage, the new thrones, the music, the bank holiday and so much more. But for months, there’s been a long-simmering controversy about what crown Queen Consort Camilla will wear. The original plan/scheme was to possibly have Camilla wear the traditional “Mary Teck” queen-consort crown worn by Charles’s grandmother, the last queen consort. The problem with that is the traditional queen-consort crown includes the Koh-i-Noor, a diamond stolen from India, a diamond which India wants back in no uncertain terms. Narendra Modi’s government has already made it clear that they will have a huge problem if Camilla trots out wearing the Koh-i-noor. So… other crown plans have been quietly debated for months. The solution has just been announced, weirdly at the same time Camilla is canceling events because of another Covid infection.

Camilla’s crown for her Coronation on May 6 has been revealed. The Queen Consort, 75, will wear the Crown of Queen Mary which was today removed from the Tower of London. It’s been revealed she will wear the consort crown made for Mary of Teck in 1911. It was placed on the Queen Mother’s coffin during her 2002 funeral and has since sat on public display in the Tower of London.

The choice of Queen Mary’s Crown by Her Majesty is the first time in recent history that an existing crown will be used for the Coronation of a Consort instead of a new commission being made. Some minor changes and additions will be undertaken by the Crown Jeweller.

These changes will in particular pay tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as the Crown will be reset with the Cullinan III, IV and V diamonds. The diamonds were part of Queen Elizabeth II’s personal jewellery collection for many years and were often worn by Her late Majesty as brooches.

The crown is expected to include a replica of the controversial Koh-i-Noor diamond. The diamond has been at the centre of a 700-year political and legal wrangle over its ownership. Some in India and Pakistan believe the gemstone, which was discovered in the 14th century, was stolen by the British Empire and are demanding its return.

[From The Sun]

Love the way India’s ownership of the Koh-i-Noor is filtered through the British media. “Some in India and Pakistan believe the gemstone, which was discovered in the 14th century, was stolen by the British Empire.” Where was it discovered? The Sun doesn’t say! And only “some people,” huh? So… Camilla WILL wear the traditional queen consort’s crown, the Mary Teck crown worn by queen consorts in the 20th century. But the Koh-i-Noor will be removed and replaced with a “replica,” plus QEII’s Cullinan diamonds will be set in the updated crown? Basically, instead of dealing with the Koh-i-Noor drama head-on and actually having a debate about whether the diamond should be returned, the Windsors are just going to hide the Koh-i-Noor and pretend that it doesn’t exist? (How much do you want to bet that the “replica” will just end up being the actual Koh-i-noor?)

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Getty.

I wish I could find that white lady TikToker who broke down Bethenny Frankel’s whole energy and vibe, which the TikToker described as “it’s giving Bitter Hag.” I think about that every time I write about Bethenny these days, and by that I mean, Bethenny knows she’s going to get attention every time she brings her bitter energy towards successful Black women. Recently, Bethenny has spent a lot of time talking about how much she hates the Duchess of Sussex. But did you also know that Bethanny Frankel has sh-t to say about Rihanna?

Bethenny Frankel wasn’t wowed by Rihanna’s Super Bowl 2023 halftime show. The “Real Housewives of New York City” alum found the 34-year-old’s performance “good not great,” she admitted in an Instagram video Monday. The former reality star recalled once attending a Rihanna concert the same month she saw Pink live, calling the “Umbrella” singer a “much less inspired” performer than the 43-year-old rocker.

“It wasn’t even comparable,” Frankel, 52, said. “Pink was just so incredibly passionate.”

As for Sunday’s show, the ex Bravolebrity noted that taking the stage while pregnant with baby No. 2 “could not have been easy” for Rihanna.

Despite her lukewarm reaction to the gig, Frankel clarified that she considers Rihanna a “winner” whether her “performance was amazing or not” because her makeup company, Fenty Beauty, “won the Super Bowl in the beauty category…Rihanna was touching up with her makeup, and her whole entire makeup brand flew and paid for all these influencers to go to the Super Bowl. They’re going to do hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.”

[From Page Six]

Does Bethenny understand that no one needs her input? I get that she’s trying to style herself as a social media influencer – even though she’s regularly dragged on all platforms – but every time she’s getting attention, it’s because she doesn’t have the good sense god gave a goose. Can I just say? Bethenny has consistently tried to “analyze” women of color from a “businesswoman” perspective, but she always gets fundamental things wrong about business. Rihanna is a billionaire already with successful clothing, intimates and beauty lines, in addition to her wildly successful music career. Bethenny is just some Real Housewife wannabe influencer trying to market her own body dysmorphia, bigotry and self-hatred to a larger audience.

comparing her to “p!nk”… she has officially lost me pic.twitter.com/3tuqEqXEpo

— Edna Del Lastrassi (@goIdicocks) February 13, 2023

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Saturday night, Megan Fox posted some photos on her Instagram with the Beyonce-lyric message: “You can taste the dishonesty/ it’s all over your breath.” She also included a video of an envelope burning, and some suggested that she was burning some of Machine Gun Kelly’s love letters. The rumor-mongering was steady all day Sunday and Monday, something about how Megan and MGK had some kind of falling out and they broke off their engagement and possibly broke up. What’s weird is that they were just together on Friday night at Drake’s Super Bowl party. They looked affectionate inside the event, but as they were leaving, Megan did look upset. I’m including those photos – MGK looks like he’s trying to comfort her or keep hold of her as they leave the party, and I think she might have even brushed away a few tears. According to People’s sources, Megan and MGK had a huge fight at some point this weekend:

Megan Fox is “very upset” with Machine Gun Kelly after a fight over the weekend, a source tells PEOPLE.

A source says the actress, 36, is not on speaking terms at the moment with her musician fiancé, 32, following a dispute during Super Bowl weekend. “Megan is very upset. They had a fight over the weekend and Megan won’t speak to him,” says the source.

“They haven’t officially called off the engagement, but Megan took her ring off,” the source adds, noting that while the couple “have had issues in the past, things seem pretty serious this time.”

[From People Magazine]

I wonder what he did? The Instagram – which she later deleted – kind of suggested that he cheated. Did she just find out about his infidelity when they were out at the Super Bowl party? Hm. I do hope Megan is done with him, but… she’s always been chaotic in love. She fell hard and fast for MGK and they got very wrapped up in each other very quickly. It’s going to take a minute to unwind that, I think. Also: Fans think MGK is banging his guitarist Sophie Lloyd. Eh.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Megan’s deleted IG.

The first half of the fourth season of You dropped on Netflix on Friday. Obviously I binged it and I like the switched up premise. I like seeing Joe on his toes! Anyway, I did notice in the first five episodes, there is a notable decrease in sex scenes compared to the previous seasons. And apparently that was by design. Penn Badgley asked the show’s creator to have Joe’s intimate scenes reduced as much as possible due to his career goals and his marriage.

Penn Badgley made a special request ahead of filming season 4 of You.

The 36-year-old actor shared on the latest episode of Stitcher Studios’ Podcrushed podcast that he asked You’s showrunner to limit his sex scenes in the upcoming season of the Netflix psychological thriller.

“I asked Sera Gamble, [the] creator, ‘Can I just do no more intimacy scenes?’ This was actually a decision I had made before I took the show. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it publicly, but one of the main things is, Do I want to put myself back on a career path where I’m always [the] romantic lead?”

Badgley, who married Domino Kirke in February 2017, added: “Fidelity in every relationship — especially in a marriage — is important to me.”

He continued, “It got to a point where [I thought], ‘I don’t want to do that,’ so I said to Sera, like, ‘My desire would be zero [intimate scenes], to go from 100 to zero.’”

That said, Badgley realized his request might not be possible and that “I signed this contract. I signed up for the show. I know what I did.”

He added, “You can’t take this aspect out of the DNA of the concept, so ‘How much less can you make it?’ was my question to them.”

To Badgley’s relief, Gamble “didn’t even bat an eye. She was really glad that I was that honest, and she was sort of almost empowered. She had a really positive response and they came back with a phenomenal reduction.”

[From People]

So it seems like Penn’s reasoning is twofold — not wanting to play a romantic lead forever and fidelity in his marriage. I’m not surprised by the former — I was surprised he even took this show because it seemed like he wanted to get away from that type of casting. But it is interesting that he says that he made this decision before he signed the contract and then signed it anyway, knowing what it was. I guess he really wanted to take on this meaty role? Anyway, they have changed the show to honor Penn’s request this season. Joe used to have sex with at least two women per season in fairly graphic scenes, but this season there have only been a few kiss/shirt off/cutaway scenes a la network TV. I thought that was because Joe was still pining over last season’s love interest, but I guess not. The changes work narratively though. Penn has always been pretty realistic about his character and the show though and gets props for his honesty, for example, saying that viewers shouldn’t have crushes on Joe. The latest callout: saying Netflix glamorized Jeffrey Dahmer. You is such a big hit, Netflix probably doesn’t care and he can say what he wants. I’m looking forward to the second half of season four. But it seems like we’ll have to wait another season for Cardi B’s cameo.

photos courtesy of Netflix

On Monday, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Camilla would skip her planned engagements for today, Tuesday, because she had come down with a cold. I honestly didn’t think much of it – lots of people get colds this time of year, especially people in public-facing jobs. Camilla had several events last week, which saw her interacting with the large swathes of the public. She did so maskless. Well, you guessed it (when I didn’t) – Camilla has Covid. Again! She had it this time last year too, and last year’s bout of Covid came right after she breathed all over people at a food event and the British Asian Trust awards!

Queen Camilla has tested positive for coronavirus nearly a year to the day after her first diagnosis with COVID-19 was announced. Buckingham Palace shared the news in a statement on Monday.

“After suffering the symptoms of a cold, Her Majesty The Queen Consort has tested positive for the Covid virus,” the palace said. “With regret, she has therefore cancelled all her public engagements for this week and sends her sincere apologies to those who had been due to attend them.”

Last February, Clarence House announced that Queen Camilla, 75, tested positive for COVID. Camilla tested positive four days after her husband, who was then known as Prince Charles, entered self-isolation following his own positive coronavirus diagnosis.

[From People]

Last year, when Camilla came down with Covid, they made a point of saying she had been triple-vaccinated, meaning she got the first two shots then a booster. I wonder if she got a fourth shot/second booster? Here in America, everyone was encouraged to get another booster last fall, and/or get the bivalent booster, which is what I got (I actually got a flu shot AND the bivalent booster, it’s a long story).

Anyway, I’m not going to slam Camilla – almost everyone is going maskless these days, myself included. We have gotten to that point where vaccinated people get Covid and the overwhelming majority recover within a week, which is what public health officials wanted. CB actually just got Covid too – she found out the same day as Camilla. Prayers up for CB! And Camilla too, I guess.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

I’m going to start this on a nice note: Kristen Bell is doing good work to combat children’s hunger. Her snack brand This Saves Lives was acquired by Good Worldwide, which will expand their charitable reach. I don’t approve of everything Kristen does, but she deserves credit for that. Real Simple magazine made her one of their Game Changers, with an accompanying interview. With Kristen, that means everything ison the table. Of course, her homelife with Dax Shepard came up. And their daughters Lincoln, nine, and Delta, eight. Kristen said that, like her interviews, when it came to their kids, she and Dax hold nothing back. There is no topic that they won’t go into with the girls, including Dax’s addiction and recovery, sex and any other “hard topic” they want to address.

Kristen Bell believes in keeping an open relationship with her daughters.

Appearing in REAL SIMPLE’s Game Changers print and digital issue — it’s first-ever celebrity cover — the Frozen star, 42, talked about why she thinks keeping total honesty with her kids is one of her keys to parenting.

“I hate the word ‘taboo.’ I think it should be stricken from the dictionary,” she tells the outlet. “There should be no topic that’s off the table for people to talk about.”

Bell notes that conversations she and husband Dax Shepard have with daughters Delta, 8, and Lincoln, 9½, might be “shocking” for some, but make sense for her parenting style.

“I know it’s shocking, but I talk to my kids about drugs, and the fact that their daddy is an addict and he’s in recovery, and we talk about sex,” she says. “There are all these ‘hard topics’ that don’t have to be if you give the person on the other end your vulnerability and a little bit of credit.”

The Good Place actress later discusses why some of the rules that she and the Armchair Expert co-host, 48, have for their family are about teaching life skills.

“Making amends and apologizing is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go,” Bell says. “I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize. I’m like, ‘Yeah, right on.’ That’s important.”

[From Real Simple via People]

In theory, I don’t have an issue with this. Technically I’m the same with my kids. When they were Kristen’s daughters’ ages, they would ask what something was or meant and I’d generally say, “it has to do with sex, do you want me to tell you?” and let them make that choice. Like Kristen, I didn’t want sex to be taboo, but I also didn’t want to put them into a discussion they weren’t ready to have. They’re very comfortable discussing sex with us now. There are boundaries but also a safe space for them to come to us with questions and concerns. I also agree with discussing Dax’s addiction. I think there’s a way to do that, but I don’t think parents should necessarily hide their issues from kids. I say that, though, not having openly discussed my eating disorder with my kids so I’m kind of a huge hypocrite.

This makes for a great segue to the making amends part of Kristen’s comments since apparently, I’ll be apologizing to my kids soon. I absolutely agree that apologizing is important. And I think that parents, if they are in fact wrong, should apologize to their kids. I wonder how this translates with the amount that Kristen and Dax talk about fighting and not speaking to each other because of fights. Are the girls witness to these blowups between Mom and Dad as well? And worse, are they dragged into them? Apologies are good when they are amends. But they lose their effectiveness when they are turned into weapons or punishments.

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We learned last summer that the Batgirl movie was completely scrapped by Warner Brothers Discovery. The studio said that screenings went terribly and that finishing the editing and releasing the movie would cause them to lose even more money than shelving it would. Apparently, the stars of the movie didn’t even find out that the movie was shelved from the studio. Actress Leslie Grace said she found out from the New York Post article. Leslie spoke to Variety about her thoughts on the film and its shelving for the first time since the news was announced.

When “Batgirl” completed its seven-month production in Scotland, star Leslie Grace received a wrap gift from Brendan Fraser, who played her nemesis, Firefly, in the DC movie — a gold necklace that included two charms, a little bell and a pair of dice.

“The card said a lot of really sweet things, but he basically said, ‘I give you this necklace because in this business you gotta have a little luck. So ring your bell and never stop,’” Grace says. “It was just like, Whoa. And after all this, it’s had so much meaning.”

“All this” is the August bombshell that Warner Bros. Discovery had decided to kill the film, co-directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. After the first disappointing test screenings, WBD executives chose to take a tax write-off instead of trying to complete work on the film, which had cost the debt-ridden studio $90 million, and would have cost many more millions to finish.

Grace says she had no idea the movie, originally set to stream on HBO Max, was shelved, until it was first reported by the New York Post.

“I found out like the rest of you,” she says. “And then my phone just started blowing up.”

Variety talked at length with the 28-year-old Grace. It’s the first time she’s opened up in such depth since learning of Batgirl’s fate.

On the DC studio head saying releasing the movie could have hurt the studio: They weren’t really specific on anything creative in terms of what they felt about the film and how it would’ve hurt DC creatively. But I’m a human being, and people have perceptions and people read things. And when words are expressed very lightly about work that people really dedicated a lot of time to — not just myself but the whole crew — I can understand how it could be frustrating.

On whether she thought the movie would work: I’m not going to lie to you. In every film, there are obstacles, and our film was nothing short of that. Half of the shoot was night shoots in Scotland, where it never stops raining. So there were obstacles, but at the end of the day, because of the incredible crew, nothing that ever got in the way of us delivering what we knew we wanted to deliver for this film. At least from what I was able to see.

On seeing a final cut of the film: That’s the one thing I asked for. I got to see the film as far as it got to; the film wasn’t complete by the time that it was tested. There were a bunch of scenes that weren’t even in there. They were at the beginning of the editing process, and they were cut off because of everything going on at the company. But the film that I got to see — the scenes that were there — was incredible. There was definitely potential for a good film, in my opinion. Maybe we’ll get to see clips of it later on.

[From Variety]

My first thought reading this was that Leslie is incredibly gracious — particularly when she’s like “I understand how it could be frustrating [that they said the movie would hurt DC creatively].” She obviously has to take the high road to protect her career, but what happened to her sucks and the way she found out sucks. By her account, she made a movie she felt good about and proud of, even seeing the filmed scenes that the studio deemed bad, so it sucks that it likely won’t see the light of day. It sounds like it was a tough shoot at times, so it begs the question, why didn’t the studio step in and make their changes sooner, when filming was still going on and it would have been likely easier to implement? Was this really just a casualty of the merger? This was incredibly poorly handled. I don’t know much about Leslie, but I hope her career doesn’t suffer from this. Unfortunately, it seems like it already has, with her new project cited in the Variety article being a podcast series.

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Here are some photos from Monday’s Oscar nominee luncheon, always one of the highlights of the awards season. The vibes were good, judging from the photos and the tweets from the entertainment journalists. Tom Cruise was there as producer of Top Gun: Maverick, and he was the surprise hit of the luncheon – everyone wanted to take photos with him, and he wanted to talk to everyone, especially the Everything Everywhere team and Steven Spielberg. Ana de Armas wasn’t there, neither was Andrea Riseborough. They’re both working on various productions, maybe they couldn’t get the time off. Barry Keoghan also skipped.

Some fashion notes: Angela Bassett’s striped suit is Moschino; Cate Blanchett’s ensemble is Lanvin, Michelle Yeoh wore Chanel, Hong Chau (pictured with Brendan Fraser) wore Dries Van Noten, Stephanie Hsu wore Thom Browne and Michelle Williams wore a Self-Portrait denim look. There’s no real dress code for the luncheon, as you can tell. Some people turn up in cocktail dresses, some people turn up in jeans.

The menu for the luncheon was pretty simple: the first course was a fancy salad, the second course was “king oyster mushroom scallops, wild mushroom risotto, roasted Brussels sprouts, baby carrots and pea tendrils.” Dessert was opera cake, ganache and berries.

At the luncheon, AMPAS president Janet Yang addressed last year’s controversy, the Slap – Yang said that the Academy’s response was inadequate and “We learned from this that the Academy must be fully transparent and accountable in our actions, and particularly in times of crisis we must act swiftly, compassionately and decisively for ourselves and for our industry. You should and can expect no less from us going forward.” Yeah – the Academy’s response was utter dogsh-t and I doubt much has changed. Yang also gave the nominees a lecture about not going over their 45-second time limit for speeches.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Ashley Graham is mother to three sons: Isaac, two, and twins Roman and Malachi, one. Ashley shares a lot on Instagram, including changing diapers on dirty store floors and showing her stretchmarks. She’s also shown herself nursing, only there aren’t many of those anymore because Ashley has given that up. When she appeared on The Daily Show, guest host Chelsea Handler praised Ashely for her breastfeeding shots and pumping breast milk for her sons. Ashley corrected Chelsea saying she was finished breastfeeding because with twins, it was just too much.

As a mother of three, Ashley Graham is over people telling moms how to feed their kids.

Though the 35-year-old supermodel has shared multiple breastfeeding photos on Instagram, she doesn’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. During Graham’s recent appearance on The Daily Show, host Chelsea Handler praised her for “normalizing” breastfeeding on social media, saying, “You have your boobs out, you’re constantly pumping, feeding these kids,” before correcting herself and saying, “not pumping.”

However, Graham chimed in, saying, “It’s all of the above.” After welcoming her first child—a baby boy named Isaac—with Justin Ervin in February 2021, Graham thought breastfeeding was the only “right way” to feed her child. That changed after she gave birth to her twins, Roman and Malachi, in January 2022. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing this,’” she said. “‘This is not working here. Both of you want both of these? Like, that’s a lot of work.’ So I stopped breastfeeding when they were five months and I gave them the best formula that I could find in America.”

[From Glamour]

I’ve heard nursing twins is never-ending. Once one finishes, the other wants on. I hated breastfeeding my singles so I’m sure I wouldn’t have lasted as long as Ashley did if I’d had two at one time. I respect her for correcting the information on The Daily Show like she did. She’s going to get blowback from this, and she could have let Chelsea praise her and not said anything. Lie by omission, yes, but not as egregious. But she didn’t. Ashley said what I believe and what I am sure some other breastfeeding moms have felt, that it’s hard and exhausting. That is not a universal truth. There are women who love breastfeeding and I love that for them. Breastfeeding is beautiful and I wish that for everyone who does it. Post your shots, sing its praises, keep going – do you! But for anyone about to start this journey, just know that it is not the same for everyone. So do what’s right for you and your baby. Ask your doctor/doula or therapist what you should do, not TikTok or Facebook. And don’t worry if you feel differently about it than others, fed is best.

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