Here are photos from last night’s Critics Choice Awards, a pretty boring awards show overall, and definitely lacking in the kind of drunken shenanigans of the Golden Globes. Anya Taylor-Joy wore this beige/flesh-tone Dior which… it’s bad. In general, I dislike when pale, wispy blondes go for beige/nude/flesh colors, but in this particular case, I think the issue was definitely the skirt and the granny panties. No disrespect to granny panties – I wear them myself. But this Dior is definitely giving “budget leotard” and not high-end couture.

Michelle Williams in custom Louis Vuitton Not the best, not the worst. Design-wise, it seems a bit meh, but she looks pretty and sparkly.

Kate Hudson in Oscar de la Renta. I really liked this? Was it something we’ve seen a million times before? Sure. But was it also a very good version of something familiar? Also yes.

Julia Roberts in Schiaparelli. I was shocked that Julia wore something with such a simple, sleek and elegant design and I was surprised that this was Schiaparelli, a label which is known for putting giant boob hooks on dresses. Anway, I loved this and I would wear it.

I truly cannot get over Lily James in this Versace. It’s SO BAD. Ladies, never wear a dress that does this to your bust. And just avoid stiff, stripped, tulle ruffles.

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty.

Here are some photos from last night’s Critics’ Choice Awards in LA. There weren’t many “wow” looks because – obviously – women are saving their biggest looks for more important award shows. If I was a nominee, I would probably show up in a simple suit or comfortable sack dress and just call it a day. Some women do make a bigger effort though, like Elle Fanning. Elle loves to get dressed up! Elle wore this deconstructed ball gown from Alexander McQueen. She looks like a dream. Genuinely, I love this on her.

People were going on and on about Aubrey Plaza in this bespoke Louis Vuitton and… I don’t get it? It’s not a bad dress but jeez. Also: some women shouldn’t go blonde and Aubrey is one of them.

Viola Davis in custom Valentino. It’s sparkly and flattering, although I feel like there are too many design elements. I was too busy looking at the half-sleeve and half-cape instead of taking in the whole dress.

I think Daisy Edgar-Jones is really pretty but I’m starting to wonder if her stylist is undermining her. This is Gucci and it’s way too much. Like Viola’s dress, too many design elements.

Claire Foy in Prada. It looks like she’s wearing a repurposed sarong. I kind of enjoy it and whatever, it’s different.

Kaley Cuoco in Dior, a custom maternity dress. I’m shocked this is Dior! The cutouts at the neckline are kind of terrible, they should have just lowered the neck on the dress. It feels very Sister Wife, very Country Music Awards.

Jennifer Coolidge in Dolce & Gabbana. Simple, fine. It’s amazing to see Coolidge get all of this recognition for The White Lotus.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Angela Bassett took home the Critics Choice Award last night for Best Supporting Actress in Wakanda Forever. She’s been sweeping this awards season and is the one to beat at the Oscars in March. She was in a formfitting black Christian Siriano with a ruffled peplum and hem. It’s not my favorite gown, I liked her Golden Globes look better, but her styling elevates it. She elevates everything.I loved how her husband, Courtney B. Vance, has his phone out recording her when she wins. I hope he does that at the Academy Awards too! Her necklace and earrings are Messika. (Thanks JJ for the ID!)

Her bathroom looks so nice!

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Amanda Seyfried won Best Actress in a Limited Series for her work in The Dropout. Notice how, unlike Austin Butler, she’s not still speaking in her character’s voice. I want to know the musical she’s working on that kept her from the Golden Globes! Everyone is speculating about it. (Update: It’s a Thelma and Louise musical with Evan Rachel Wood! That sounds promising.) She was in a bizarre gold Ferragamo with a boned corset featuring a fringed bustline. It was unique, I’ll give her stylist that. Apparently the dress was from a single piece of fabric and kept ripping during the ceremony. That incredible necklace is Cartier.

Julia Garner was nominated for Best Supporting Actress In A Drama Series, for Ozark, which went to Jennifer Coolidge. She was also in Ferragamo, in a red mullet dress with a bandeau top and sheer front. This is pretty bad, Ferragamo did these actresses dirty, but I like her Bvlgari necklace. I remember when Naomi Watts was wearing her snake necklace on all the red carpets. Those never go out of style.

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Presenter Kerry Washington was in a really awesome strapless Armani gown with a floral sequin pattern. This doesn’t photograph as well as it looked on camera. I hope we see more floral patterned gowns this awards season, that’s a minor trend I’ve noticed which is striking when it’s done well.

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Bryony Gordon and Prince Harry have been friends for years. Gordon is a journalist, but she’s more of an advocate-journalist, and she specializes in reporting and interviews around mental health. Gordon and Harry did work on Heads Together, and Gordon has been one of the few British journalists to talk in real terms about who Meghan and Harry really are and what they’re like. Well, Gordon was invited to Montecito to interview Harry for the Telegraph. It’s an excellent piece and I would recommend reading it in full. Harry really opens up to her again, and this interview was conducted just a day or two before Spare was released (and the British media was leaking everything they could about it).

He’s worried about the other Windsor spares: “If I see wrongdoing and a pattern of behaviour that is harming people, I will do everything I can to try and change it.” He worries about the other “spares” in the family. “As I know full well, within my family, if it’s not us,” and at this he points at his chest, “it’s going to be someone else. And though William and I have talked about it once or twice, and he has made it very clear to me that his kids are not my responsibility, I still feel a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me.”

He knows any chance of reconciliation is unlikely at the moment. “What I’ve realised is that you don’t make any friends, especially within your family, because everyone has learned to accept that trauma [as] part of life. How dare you, as an individual, talk about it, because that makes us all feel really uncomfortable? So right, you may not like me in the moment, but maybe you’ll thank me in five or 10 years time.”

He’s not playing the victim: “Lots of people go through lots of s–t. It’s interesting because so many of those moments have made me the man I am today. Would I encourage Archie to stick his head inside a carcass? Probably not. But people who’ve experienced trauma deal with it in different ways. I think when it comes to me and William, the fascinating part is that we both experienced a similar traumatic experience. He wanted to talk about it when [we were] younger, which built up a little bit of resentment. It wasn’t anything against him, I just didn’t want to talk about it. And then as we got older, I started to go slightly off the rails, and deal with it through drinking and drugs, and he went completely silent and completely shut down. And then my life started to alter and completely change, because I wanted, or had no other choice, than to confront the very thing that I had been running from, or scared of, for all those years.”

Therapy & psychedelics: “After taking ayahuasca with the proper people. I suddenly realised – wow! – it’s not about the crying. She [Diana] wants me to be happy. So this weight off my chest was not the need to cry, it was the acceptance and realisation that she has gone, but that she wants me to be happy and that she’s very much present in my life. And now, as two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other one doesn’t, it naturally creates a further divide between you. Which is really sad. But as much as William was the first person to even suggest therapy, I just wish that he would be able to feel the same benefits of that as opposed to believing what he doesn’t need to.” (Harry claims that William thinks therapy has made him delusional.)

After all the books written about him, he has no apologies about telling his story himself: “But I always say: ‘What’s the difference between airing lies about your family through the British press, or airing truth through a book?’ In my case, this is all contained in one place where I hold myself entirely accountable and responsible for what I am saying.

Criticizing the institution: “I don’t see why it’s so ingrained [in society] that whatever happens in your family, you should never talk about it. That no matter what’s happened, I can’t do this. But they [the Royal family] can? Because of who they are and what they represent? The way I was brought up is that, as a member of the Royal family, you lead by example. So you shouldn’t be able to use that privilege to get away with more things. No institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny, and if only 10 per cent of the scrutiny that was put on me and M was put on this institution, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now….It’s so dirty. It’s so dark. And it will continue and it will carry on and I look forward to the day when we are no longer part of it, but I worry about who’s next.”

Family secrets: He says he knows that the press “have got a s–t-tonne of dirt about my family. I know they have, and they sweep it under the carpet for juicy stories about someone else.” He tells me about some of the darkest moments in 2019. “I was coming back to Frogmore after Archie was born, and I would walk into the nursery and there she [Meghan] was in floods of tears, tears dripping on Archie while she was breast-feeding him. That was a breaking point for me. And she is someone who doesn’t read the stories. She would be dead if she was reading the stories.”

Saving the Windsors from themselves: “This is not about trying to collapse the monarchy, this is about trying to save them from themselves. And I know that I will get crucified by numerous people for saying that.”

His mission: “I feel like this is my life’s mission, to right the wrongs of the very thing that drove us out. Because it took my mum, it took Caroline Flack, who was my girlfriend, and it nearly took my wife. And if that isn’t a good enough reason to use the pain and turn it into purpose, I don’t know what it is.”

He has enough for another book: He tells me that the first draft was 800 pages, whereas the finished manuscript is just over 400. “It could have been two books, put it that way.”

He left out a lot of sh-t with William & Charles: “And there were other bits that I shared with JR, that I said: ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’… There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me. Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway. But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying I’m delusional and paranoid, actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.”

[From The Telegraph]

“No institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny, and if only 10 percent of the scrutiny that was put on me and M was put on this institution, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now…” Oof. That and “he knows that the press ‘have got a s–t-tonne of dirt about my family.’” That’s something that I’ve found slightly interesting although not that surprising – in the immediate aftermath of Spare, there is no big, British figure – a historian or journalist – saying “you know what, we actually should scrutinize the monarchy more.” No one is doing that because these royal reindeer games are a billion-dollar industry. I wish some of them would realize what Omid Scobie has realized: that there’s a billion-dollar industry in covering the monarchy’s death rattle, in really examining the institutional dysfunction and corruption.

As for Harry’s concerns about the next generation’s spares – Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis – it’s almost too late, because the narratives have already started to take hold. George is already separated from his siblings for special privileges and attention, all while his siblings are being cast as his foils.

Also: I really want Harry to write a second memoir. DO IT!!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.

The Middletons have a “tell”: whenever Dodgy Gary Goldsmith comes out to give interviews, you know the sh-t is hitting the fan behind-the-scenes. I kind of wonder if Carole Middleton, much like Prince William, gets incandescent with rage at times too. It would explain a lot. Anyway, Prince Harry’s Spare has put them all in a tizzy. Again, these are not “palace sources.” This is not “a source close to Kate.” Harry has put his name on everything and it’s part of the historical record now. And all William and Kate have is… palace sources. “Close friends of the couple.” And Dodgy Gary Goldsmith, who once pleaded guilty to punching his wife in the face. This is the guy who was given his own column and byline in the Daily Mail, all to try to combat Spare. Some highlights:

No coronation for Haz: “Fat chance of him being invited to the King’s Coronation now. I’d be happy if he never came back to this country. Why would the Royal Family want him here? Why would we, as a nation?

The bridesmaids’ dresses: “This made me see red. How dare Harry share such a confidence involving a young child? How he has the temerity to talk about moving to the U.S. to ‘protect his family and their privacy’ when he is prepared to violate his niece’s confidentiality is base hypocrisy. Harry claims to be reporting an exchange of texts when he writes that Meghan told Kate to go to the Palace, where her tailor, Ajay, was standing by to alter the dresses. But this — according to Harry — was not good enough for Kate, who tersely demanded that the dress be completely remade. Nonsense. I honestly don’t believe this version of the ‘facts’. Kate is self-sufficient, resourceful and extremely capable. She comes from a family of doers and fixers and has an amazing support system in her younger sister Pippa and her mum, my older sister Carole, who runs her own successful business. She has taught her girls to deal with problems with calm capability, not histrionics.

Kate’s no drama queen: “The Kate I know so well would never have caused a fuss. She’s not a drama queen; she’s not confrontational, as the book suggests. And she’d never pile more pressure on a bride. After all, she knows the tensions involved when you marry into the Royal Family all too well.

Meghan is “crass” apparently: But if there’s a manual on ‘How Not To Behave When Joining The Royal Family’, Meghan has been following it word for word! Entitlement, crassness and casual insensitivity hallmarked her encounters with Kate and William…Then there was the titanic arrogance of their first formal meeting. Meghan barged in to hug William, using her get-out-of-jail-free card — I’m American! — to explain this breach of etiquette. Surely Harry should have explained that a curtsy was the proper way to greet an heir to the throne?

This is getting bonkers: “She chose to go barefoot and wear ripped jeans when William and Kate (more formally dressed) first came to dinner. Wouldn’t it be respectful to make some sartorial effort if you were entertaining the future King for the first time? Anyone less overbearingly self-confident than Meghan might think so.

Carole won’t say a word: “Carole will be incredibly hurt and angry about the slights and calumnies heaped on William and Kate this week, but you won’t hear a peep from her. When your eldest child becomes the future Queen, you don’t get a manual on behaviour and etiquette, but Carole and her husband, Mike, know instinctively what to do…I know this week Kate’s hurt will be mostly for William, the King and Camilla — and she’ll be quietly getting on with her job as her mum taught her, looking after her husband and family. At her core is the Goldsmith way: family means everything. Kate will, of course, have phoned Carole, who will protect her like a lioness, but for both it will be business as usual.

[From The Daily Mail]

He just goes on and on like that, ranting for several more pages. Part of me wonders if half of it is even Gary Goldsmith’s own rants. The level of detail in his complaints, insults and recollections of Spare and the Netflix series seem to indicate that a Daily Mail reporter or editor definitely “filled in” much of the column. If this is really Kate’s uncle saying and writing all of this sh-t, then the Middletons should be deeply embarrassed that someone directly related to the “future queen” is so rabidly obsessed with Harry and Meghan. Gary’s tell is this: “Kate will, of course, have phoned Carole, who will protect her like a lioness, but for both it will be business as usual.” Which means Carole is freaking out and calling up reporters (which is exactly what she IS doing).

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Diane Kruger covers the January issue of Tatler. She’s promoting a new movie, Marlowe, based on Raymond Chandler’s The Black-Eyed Blonde. She’s also promoting a children’s book she wrote during the pandemic called A Name From the Sky, a celebration of names. As such, she’s revealed her four-year-old daughter’s name after keeping it quiet all this time. Her daughter is named Nova Tennessee Reedus. Diane and Norman Reedus are still together, and they’re raising Nova all over the world. Diane talks a lot about her daughter in this Tatler piece too, among other subjects. Some highlights:

On the nomadic actor life: ‘We teach [our daughter] that she is at home in the world, that we have friends all over the world [and] that we really don’t have to miss people because we’re just going to go for a little bit and then come back. We’re very lucky to have homes in different places.’ (The Kruger-Reedus property portfolio also includes a home in Paris, as well as a ‘little country house’ in upstate New York.)

Playing Helen of Troy: ‘I mean, Helen of Troy obviously was based on the way I looked, But I don’t think they could have given it to any model, right? They wouldn’t have given it to me if I didn’t have at least a little bit of talent.’ When the film – though not her performance – was ravaged by critics, Kruger retreated to the world of European cinema. ‘I was able to continue making French movies and slowly the perception changed… people started seeing me in other things.’

Nova understands German: ‘I speak to her in German all the time. And she understands it all. She’s a very outgoing young girl.’ In Latin, Nova means new, which felt ‘very personal’ to Kruger and Reedus, who met when they were 39 and 46 respectively. Nova’s middle name is Tenessee, in tribute to Kruger’s discovery that she was pregnant while on a motorbike trip with Reedus in the state.

On her daughter’s privacy:‘You know, what you’re comfortable with changes with time. When she was first born, you really try to shield her from all public gaze. I felt very strongly about that, which I didn’t know I would. But as she grew older, it didn’t… We have never shown her face… all of our friends obviously know what her name is and it just tied in with the book. It seems natural to tell her and the world how special she is to us and how much we put into the meaning of her name.’

Her previous relationships: ‘I didn’t want children for a long time. I really liked my life the way it was. In my late thirties, I was starting to think about it but I wasn’t in a place in my relationship at the time – or whatever – where that was going to be a possibility and so I had kind of given up hope and I thought it was just too late. And I was OK with that. While writing this book, it definitely felt like sometimes life gives you things when you least expect them but most need them. The arrival of Nova has changed my life – our lives – in the best possible way. It’s just amazing that you thought you were one thing but you’re meant to do something completely different.’

Life with Norman Reedus: At home, work talk with Reedus is kept to a minimum. ‘This is maybe the first time in my adult life that I’m in a relationship where I respect him to do his thing. I want him to feel he can do anything he’s interested in and I would support that. And I expect that the other way around [from him].’

Paris vs. NYC: ‘Paris is a smaller city… I started out in France, so a lot of people know me there for French movies,’ Kruger seems more at ease in Europe than America. Currently, in New York, ‘There’s a lot of crime, a lot of dirt everywhere. The news is Trump, Trump, climate change. It’s oppressive sometimes. Moving to Europe – it’s not like they don’t have their problems – but it just felt like we were getting out of our bubble. It’s a change of scenery that has been really good for us.’

France has less ageism: ‘When you see people out in restaurants, it seems that there are so many attractive women of all ages. I’m sure there is sexism and the same issues that Americans face, but I know a lot of women [in France] who are happy with their second, third marriage. They have boyfriends way into their fifties.’

[From Tatler]

“In my late thirties, I was starting to think about it but I wasn’t in a place in my relationship at the time – or whatever – where that was going to be a possibility and so I had kind of given up hope and I thought it was just too late. And I was OK with that.” I’m not mad at her about the Joshua Jackson stuff at this point, it’s water under the bridge and they both moved on with people who suit them a lot better. But also: it feels like Diane wasn’t “ready” to have a kid with Joshua, her partner of a decade, and then she cheated on Joshua with Reedus and suddenly she’s ready to have a baby with Reedus? I mean, sometimes it happens that way and when you know you know. But it also feels like she’s always blaming Joshua for her own bullsh-t.

Cover courtesy of Tatler, additional pics courtesy of Instar and Avalon Red.

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Sheryl Lee Ralph says what’s on her mind and I love it. She’s very honest and direct. Last I wrote about her, she called out Jimmy Kimmel for his disrespectful actions during Quinta Brunson’s Emmy win. And now she’s calling out the Kardashians by name and other people who appropriate/emulate Black features and style. A reporter asked her about advice to her younger self on the Golden Globes carpet and Sheryl answered with the general message of loving yourself the way you are and some specific lip injection shade.

Sheryl Lee Ralph appears to be throwing a dig at the Kardashians.

While walking the red carpet at the 2023 Golden Globes on Tuesday (January 10), the 66-year-old Abbott Elementary actress was asked by by a reporter what advice she would give to her 15-year-old self.

In her answer, Sheryl shaded the Kardashian-Jenner ladies.“There’s nothing wrong with your nose. There is nothing wrong with the shade of your skin,” Sheryl told InStyle. “There is nothing wrong with the way your hair grows out of your head.”

She continued, “And there is certainly nothing wrong with your lips because there will be some people called Kardashians and they will pay $10,000 for your lips. Hang in there 15-year-old Sheryl Lee Ralph! You’re good!”

After her comments went viral, Sheryl seemingly doubled down on her interview, tweeting later that night, “I said what I said. Now, I’m going to bed. Goodnight! ”

[From Just Jared]

I chuckled a bit that Sheryl’s doubling down included a rhyme. She said what she said and now she’s getting her rest. Sheryl was only asked about what advice she’d give herself and maybe the KarJenners caught a stray bit of shade here, but she’s not wrong. Euro-centric beauty standards of straight hair, light skin, etc, are really damaging to young Black girls. The way those white features are idealized is harmful and I definitely could have used Sheryl’s advice as a teen when I was insecure about those things. The message was so internalized I didn’t even realize at the time it was anti-Black. And it’s still damaging that all those attributes are celebrated on white women who come by them surgically instead of the Black women who have them naturally. And yes, Sheryl’s completely right that people pay good money for a pale imitation of these lips. No lies detected here.

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After Christmas, King Charles and Queen Camilla traveled up to Scotland and they’ve been there ever since. In the olden days, QEII would stay at Sandringham through early-to-mid-February before returning to London or Windsor. Charles is starting a new tradition: New Year’s in Scotland.

On Thursday, around the same time Prince William and Kate were visiting Liverpool, Charles made his first public appearance of the year. The Windsors were definitely hunkered down, waiting for Prince Harry’s Spare to blow over, and this was clearly a coordinated effort to “turn the page.” A visual “so, anyway.” Is it working? Eh. Charles stepped out in Aberdeen and he wore a kilt and he spoke to mostly older people. He seemed happy, although he’s seemed extremely joyful ever since his mother died (it’s macabre). While Prince Harry’s Spare has not been good for the monarchy, I’m consistently surprised by how palpably Harry loves and cares for his father. Harry forgives his father, confides in his father, understands his father, adores his father and still wants his father’s love. Charles must be disgusted by how much Harry is exactly like Diana.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed this twofer: Spare is flying off the shelves in France, and King Charles’s first foreign trip will be to France:

Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare is doing so well in France that publishers have launched a fresh print run after the first 210,000 copies flew off the shelves. The book sold 1.4 million English-language copies on its first day in Britain, the United States and Canada, smashing Penguin Random House’s sales record. More surprising was its runaway success in France, despite the country’s revolutionary penchant for cutting off its monarchs’ heads.

Strong orders for the French version of Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir led Paris-based publishing house Fayard to print 130,000 extra copies only two days after the book went on sale. The publisher could not yet give exact sales figures. Despite their Republican values, the French have long displayed a fascination for British royalty. Seven out of ten French people recently expressed a positive opinion of the Royal family.

In the latest sign of proximity, it emerged that King Charles will make his first state visit to the country in March to build bridges post-Brexit. The visit, pencilled in for the week of March 27, will include a state dinner at the Elysee Palace and a meeting between Camilla and France’s first lady Brigitte Macron, according to Le Parisien.

Mr Macron is said to have extended an official invitation to the King when he travelled to London for the Queen’s funeral. “I think the British people and the King felt France’s deep affection for them and the emotion we shared,” he said at the time.

[From The Telegraph]

I think it’s interesting that Charles’s first trip as king will be a visit to France. I expected him to visit a Commonwealth country first, didn’t you? Like, a week in Canada? He’ll probably go to Australia this year too, after the coronation. Maybe it makes sense that pre-coronation, he’ll just visit countries which are relatively close. As for French people reading Spare… mon deux!

Photos courtesy of Andrew Milligan/Avalon.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had a rocky engagement and a rocky first few months of marriage. When I say “rocky,” I mean their treatment in the British media, not their relationship. They were happy together and Meghan would get pregnant soon after the wedding. They only announced the pregnancy in October 2018, telling members of the family at Princess Eugenie’s wedding, which was scheduled just before Harry and Meghan left for their South Pacific tour. The tour itself was a raging success – Meghan was hailed as a breath of fresh air, a true asset, a truly transformative figure for the monarchy. It all came crashing down just days after they returned to the UK. From Spare:

Stories rolled in, like breakers on a beach. First a rubbish hit piece by a hack biographer of Pa, who said I’d thrown a tantrum before the wedding. Then a work of fiction about Meg making her staff miserable, driving them too hard, committing the unpardonable sin of emailing people early in the morning. (She just happened to be up at that hour, trying to stay in touch with night-owl friends back in America—she didn’t expect an instant reply.)

She was also said to have driven our assistant to quit; in fact that assistant was asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies. But because we couldn’t speak publicly about the reasons for the assistant’s departure, rumors filled the void. In many ways that was the true start of all the troubles. Shortly thereafter, the “Duchess Difficult” narrative began appearing in all the papers. Next came a novella in one of the tabloids about the tiara. The article said Meg had demanded a certain tiara that had belonged to Mummy, and when the Queen refused, I’d thrown a fit: What Meghan wants, Meghan gets!

Days later came the coup de grâce: from a royal correspondent, a sci-fi fantasy describing the “growing froideur” (good Lord) between Kate and Meg, claiming that, according to “two sources,” Meg had reduced Kate to tears about the bridesmaids’ dresses. This particular royal correspondent had always made me ill. She’d always, always got stuff wrong. But this felt more than wrong. I read the story in disbelief. Meg didn’t. She still wasn’t reading anything. She heard about it, however, since it was the only thing being discussed in Britain for the next twenty-four hours, and as long as I live I’ll never forget the tone of her voice as she looked me in the eye and said: Haz, I made her cry? I made HER cry?

We arranged a second summit with Willy and Kate. This time on our turf.

[From Spare, by Prince Harry]

The 5 am emails! LMAO. Remember how pressed those Salt Islanders were? The very idea that Meghan would email someone at 5 am! Hahaha. The stuff about the assistant is very, very interesting. Wasn’t one of the long-running rumors that Kensington Palace staffers kept turning away freebies for Meghan and Meg got mad at the staffers? Now Harry says: actually, we had to fire someone because the staffer was using her connection to Meghan to get freebies. I think I know who it is too – her name was everywhere for a time that year. She not only grabbed freebies, she sold some lies to the Daily Mail. And the tiara story – a good old hatchet job from Angela Kelly.

Anyway the “second summit” was the story about William and Kate admitting that they told Charles and Camilla that there was fighting between the two couples, and how Harry believes that Camilla leaked the whole thing. I think… Harry was sort of missing the bigger picture, that Camilla wasn’t the only one who had her knives out?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

In Prince Harry’s ITV interview, Tom Bradby asked him about his father’s upcoming coronation and asked whether Harry would go to it. Harry said: “There is a lot that can happen between now and then. But, you know, the door is always open. The ball is in their court. There is a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they are willing to sit down and talk about it.” It’s funny because even though Charles has dithered on so many subjects around the Sussexes, palace sources have always maintained that Charles wants Harry at his coronation. We’ve never gotten a clear answer on whether a formal invitation has been extended by Charles or Buckingham Palace, but going off of Harry’s words, it does not seem so and it also looks like Harry has repeatedly put the ball in Charles’s court. It also sounds like Harry wants a clearing-the-air conversation as a prerequisite to his attendance at the coronation. Well, funny story:

Prince Harry will not be welcome at the Coronation of King Charles because senior family figures fear what they say will “end up in paperback”. The Duke of Sussex, 38, has stunned the royals by revealing private conversations in his memoir, Spare, and in TV interviews this week. Now the families of Princess Anne, 72, and Prince Edward, 58, are concerned that private details of the Coronation will be exploited at a later date.

The King and Princess of Wales Kate were yesterday seen for the first time since Harry’s bombshell book hit the shelves. Charles, 74, looked grim-faced behind the wheel of his car at his Scottish estate Birkhall, while Kate, 41, was spotted driving in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

There are now worries that the Coronation — which is just 16 weeks away — could turn into a Harry and Meghan circus.

Family members are concerned they would not feel comfortable speaking freely if the pair are there.

A source told The Sun: “There have been discussions among the family, including Edward and Anne. They do not want private conversations at the Coronation making it into the paperback edition of Spare.”

The concern comes after an online survey for The Sun revealed 78 per cent of 31,300 readers want the California-based couple to stay away from the historic day.

[From The Sun]

While I haven’t finished Spare, does Prince Edward get anything more than a passing mention? Anne is mentioned in the part about QEII’s death, I know that. So… why are Anne and Edward all hot and bothered? Are they mad they didn’t get more mentions in Spare? Literally, Spare is damaging enough to the entire institution, you don’t have to wail and cry about “what’s going to be in the paperback edition?!?” Anyway, Anne and Edward are Charles’s patsies. It’s Charles who wants Harry to make the executive decision to stay away from the coronation. If Harry takes that choice away from Charles, then Charles gets to wallow in self-pity and act like “well, I tried!”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.