There was a story about a month ago in the Mail, about how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had possibly been invited to the royal Christmas festivities at Sandringham this year, but they possibly already told King Charles that they’re not coming. I took the story to mean that someone in KC3’s office had put out feelers to Camp Sussex to see what their Christmas plans were, and the Sussexes made it clear that they’ve already got plans which don’t involve Sandringham. All of this so Charles doesn’t have to formally extend an invitation or actually go out of his way to be nice to his younger son. Well, there’s a follow-up story in the Daily Mail – their sources say that Charles DID invite the Sussexes but they are “unlikely to attend.” The Royalist had even more about the Royal Christmas plans:

King Charles and Queen Camilla will host the royal Christmas at Sandringham this year, continuing the long tradition established by Queen Elizabeth II as part of a determined effort to emphasize continuity, despite the change of reign. However, Prince Harry and his family are unlikely to attend.

A friend of the new king and queen exclusively told The Royalist: “It will be very strange for the family to be at Sandringham without the queen at Christmas. However the past two years have been fairly strange because of COVID, so at this stage they are just hoping, like everyone else, that a big gathering can go ahead.”

Asked if Harry would attend, the friend, who has visited Sandringham over the festive period to participate in the estate’s famous pheasant and partridge shoots in previous years, said, “Obviously his sons have a standing invitation, but the reality is that no-one is expecting Harry and Meghan to fly over, given that his book is hanging over everything.” A source told the Mail on Sunday echoed that Harry and Meghan were “unlikely to attend.”

The friend told The Daily Beast they suspected that Prince Andrew would be encouraged to keep a “low profile” if he was invited, but that this was far from certain give his elder brother’s long-standing animosity towards Andrew, who he believes has inflicted serious harm on the monarchy by his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

Prince William and Kate are expected to be at Sandringham, the friend said. With William now heir to the throne, the days of being able to duck out of the duties of the official royal Christmas and slip off to Kate’s house are likely over for good.

A question mark hangs over the attendance of Camilla’s children, Tom and Laura. They are not believed to be close to William and, although they were invited to attend the queen’s funeral, did not have prominent roles. Tom has two children by his former wife Sara Buys, a fashion editor, and art dealer Laura and her husband Harry Lopes have three teenagers.

A spokesperson for King Charles declined to comment on the guest list for Christmas, although a palace source did confirm to The Daily Beast that the traditions and customs established by Elizabeth and her predecessors would be continued by Charles.

[From The Daily Beast]

Yes, I’m curious about Camilla and what she’ll do about having her “separate Christmas,” which is what she used to do before she was queen consort. She would be in Sandringham for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning (to go to church), and then she would leave Sandringham alone and go back to Ray Mill to have the rest of the holiday with her kids and grandkids. Apparently, Charles is going to continue the German tradition of opening Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and (one would assume) the walk to church on Christmas morning. Queen Elizabeth II kept up with ALL of Queen Victoria’s holiday traditions, often at the expense of joy and togetherness. I do think that Charles will probably shake up some things, especially by allowing Camilla’s kids and grandkids to come for some or all of the festivities? Charles probably won’t go to church twice on Christmas day either.

As for Harry & Meghan… I bet Meghan and Doria will cook! Harry and Meghan will spend Christmas morning in their pajamas, listening to Christmas music and playing with their kids. That’s the American tradition! I wonder if Harry has some culture shock about how un-German Christmas is in America. As for William and Kate… well, I would imagine that Kate will just invite her family to stay at Anmer Hall for the holidays, which is what she usually does. I think it’s funny that William is TRAPPED now, no more Bucklebury Royal Court church walks, you know?

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, CHRIS RADBURN/Avalon.

Introduction: Minutes 0 to 2:00
We’ll be off for the next two weeks and will be back on December 3rd. We talk about our Thanksgiving plans. You can listen below!

Royals: Minutes 2:00 to 26:30
Chandra is five episodes in to The Crown. She wrote about Mou Mou, the fourth episode that goes into Mohamed Al-Fayed’s backstory and connection to the royals. It’s fascinating that Peter Morgan dedicated an episode to introducing the Al-Fayed family. The royals, with the exception of Diana, treated Mohamed terribly.

This week, when Prince Charles and Camilla were visiting York, a 23-year-old man in the crowd threw eggs at them and missed. He also shouted “this country was built on the blood of slaves!” Camilla and Charles were taken away but everyone seemed unbothered and the security seemed lax. The man has been charged with a “public order offense.” There are photos of Charles earlier in the week talking to people while viewing eggs for some reason.

Princess Kate went alone to her patronage the Rugby World Cup, and she visited the Colham Manor Children’s Centre outside London where she spoke to staff about maternal mental health. We also heard that she’s going to do a second Christmas Carol concert with ITV. We talk about all the junk we order online.

Mike Tindall is on the reality show I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here. Sources told the press that Tindall did not clear it with King Charles ahead of time. Chandra doesn’t think he should have to since he’s not a working royal.

Meghan’s podcast examined The B Word as she calls it. She won’t say the word bitch and we obviously can’t relate. We love that she interviewed Robin Thede. We also got a photo of her with an “I Voted” sticker. We want Archewell merchandise. There was a story in Christopher Andersen’s new book, The King: The Life of Charles III, claiming that Charles told a friend he didn’t know Meghan was biracial when he first met her. I play a segment from Zoom where we talk about the royals.

Chandra loves Olivia Williams as Camilla on The Crown. The actress playing Princess Anne, Claudia Harrison, is also very good. Dominic West has been giving interviews half praising and half shading King Charles.

Elon Musk and Twitter: Minutes 26:30 to 30
Last week we talked about Elon Musk buying Twitter after he borrowed money and was leveraged to the hilt. This week he fired thousands of Twitter employees and a bunch of them are suing him in a class action suit for breaking employment law. He also endorsed a Republican Congress and he tweeted a meme featuring a Nazi soldier. Former twitter executives are saying he has no clue what he’s doing and he’s been sh-tposting constantly. He also implemented an extra checkmark, an “official” checkmark, that only lasted a few hours. Elon Musk is tanking Twitter.

Comments of the Week: Minutes 30:00 to end
Chandra’s Comment of the Week is from BayTampaBay on the post about Penelope Knatchbull and Prince Philip’s relationship.

My COTW is from Abicci on the post about Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty Show.

Thanks for listening bitches!

photos credit: Avalon.red, Cover Images and Screenshot from YouTube

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Michelle Obama’s latest book, The Light We Carry, comes out tomorrow. There are so many great excerpts out there because she always writes about the pulse of the nation. Michelle is 58 years old (and a fellow Capricorn). Like most women in their late 50s, Michelle is going through menopause. And like many women her age, menopause was not a topic of conversation. As she noted, “information was sparse.” Now that she’s experiencing it, Michelle is joining Naomi Watts and Beverly Johnson in speaking up about putting menopause into the conversation.

When PEOPLE sat down with Michelle Obama on the eve of her 50th birthday, the then-First Lady said she was hungry for information —from her mother, from girlfriends — about menopause.

“I want to know what I’m getting into,” Obama said back then, noting with a laugh: “My mom is like, ‘Menopause? Yeah, I think I went through it.’ She doesn’t remember anything.”
Eight years later, Obama knows first-hand, but the information still isn’t as available as she would like.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Obama, 58, says in an interview previewing her upcoming new book The Light We Carry, on sale Nov. 15.

“There is not a lot of conversation about menopause. I’m going through it, and I know all of my friends are going through it. And the information is sparse.”

Those girlfriends, whom she used to gather together for regular fitness “boot camps” when she was in the White House (earning her the group’s nickname, “Drillmaster”), have given her more than just moral support during this time of physical change.

“I find that when we get together and we’re moving and we’re laughing, then we spend a little time talking about what we’re going through. ‘What’s a hot flash?’ We have girlfriends around the table who are OBGYNs, who have real information. All of that keeps us lifted up.”

Obama’s workouts have changed. “Some of it is menopause, some of it is aging,” she says. “I find that I cannot push myself as hard as I used to. That doesn’t work out for me. That when I tear a muscle or pull something and then I’m out. The recovery time is not the same.”
Her fitness routine is now focused on flexibility, she says: less cardio, more stretching. “You wind up balancing between staying fit enough and being kind enough on your body to stay in the game.”

In The Michelle Obama Podcast, which launched in July 2020, Obama disclosed that, under her doctor’s guidance, she used hormone replacement therapy to treat her hot flashes.

Elaborating on that decision, Obama says now, “I’ve had to work with hormones, and that’s new information that we’re learning. Before there were studies that said that hormones were bad. That’s all we heard. Now we’re finding out research is showing that those studies weren’t fully complete and that there are benefits to hormone replacement therapy.

“You’re trying to sort through the information and the studies and the misinformation. So I’m right there.”

[From People]

What is it with our moms just “forgetting” what menopause was like? Were they so conditioned to not discuss “wimmen matters” that they actually blotted those memories? It’s like parents telling a kid a shot isn’t going to hurt in the hope that that will somehow lessen the actual pain. By pretending menopause is so inconsequential the hot flashes, brain fogs, irritability, mood swings, hair loss, dehydration, fatigue, and general feeling of becoming invisible to the world seem much less of a bother. No thanks. I do much better when I know the enemy I’m fighting.

There’s a lot of discussion about fitness and health in Michelle’s book. It makes sense since that was her cause as First Lady. I love her approach to it in menopause. She said her goals have changed. Like “instead of having ‘Michelle Obama arms,’ I just want to keep moving.” I think that’s key. I shifted my fitness goal in menopause too. I switched from weight loss to strength. I got much stronger (shout out to my trainer Stephanie the Destroyer!) and the upside is, I ended up losing weight. Look, the shot is probably going to sting, and menopause is likely going to suck. But at least now we can get through it together.

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Photo credit: Instagram, COver Images and Backgrid

Here are some photos from the Baby2Baby gala, which has become one of the most A-list charity events in LA in recent years. Baby2Baby is a charity which helps families in poverty by providing essentials for children, everything from clothes, shoes, diapers, bottles, etc. It’s an incredibly popular charity with A-listers, and they really get a good turnout for their events. This year, the charity gala honored Kim Kardashian with the Giving Tree Award. I wasn’t even aware that Kim did much with Baby2Baby, but it’s likely that she just donates money or sponsors families. Kim wore this Barbiecore pink Balenciaga gown which… I mean, it’s fine, but it also feels like A LOT for a charity gala? I also wish she would ditch the blonde. The event was sponsored by Tiffany & Co, and a lot of the women wore Tiffany jewelry, including Kim.

Kylie Jenner came out too, and she wore Loewe. I don’t think much of any of the Kardashian-Jenner ladies’ styles, but I appreciate that Kylie seems to take more chances and she wears some offbeat designers sometimes. That being said, this is kind of meh. Still, it was her sister’s night, maybe she wanted to look more lowkey.

Olivia Wilde was a presenter at the gala. I LOATHE her ensemble. Olivia has been going through a phase where she’s making her looks all about her chest, and I don’t really get it. While the skirt is fine – even comfortable-looking – I have no idea why anyone would think a thin bandeau top is appropriate for a charity gala. This ain’t the beach, Olivia.

Lori Harvey wore Off-White to the gala. This, too me, is a bit too much as well, but I kind of like that she went for it? Why not, you know?

Miranda Kerr had my favorite look – I love velvet, I love this shade of blue and I love the cut of her two-piece dress. Slinky but classy. Her husband came with her too.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Here are some photos from this year’s Festival of Remembrance, an event which always happens the night before Remembrance Sunday in the UK. Usually, the event gets a good royal turnout, and this year was the first time King Charles got to attend as monarch. He was joined by Queen Camilla (who looked like she was half-asleep), Princess Anne, the Wessexes and, of course, William and Kate. I guess we’d be missing the point of Remembrance to talk about fashion, so I’ll just say that Kate’s suit is new-to-us and the skirt is pretty fug. The lapel is a bit shiny too, but at least she’s not still doing those oversized headbands (remember that era?). She also borrowed some Royal Collection jewels – that necklace is the same one she borrowed for QEII’s funeral. It’s a bit much, but whatever, Kate is tacky and she doesn’t know how to wear jewelry.

To me, Princess Anne looks the most dignified – a simple black suit with a three-strand pearl necklace. I wonder if those are Anne’s pearls or whether she borrowed them. King Charles wore all of his military medals, all of which are honorary. It was a bit much, but I get the feeling Chuck likes to play soldiers.

Back to William and Kate – curiously, the day after William went solo to that “charity event” at a private club with a blonde aristocrat, the Mail breathlessly reported that William and Kate had been seen having a “pub lunch” before William’s Oswalds outing. They were “seen” at a pub in Windsor by someone who had just received an OBE. Curious.

Photos courtesy of CHRIS RADBURN/Avalon.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he became bizarrely focused on monetizing users, meaning he wanted to flip Twitter’s business model on its head. The reason why Twitter was successful is the same reason why other social media platforms are successful: they’re free to use, with the understanding that with a free platform, you’re going to be force-fed advertising on the platform. Ad revenue was always how Twitter made the bulk of their money. Musk ruined that because he couldn’t even give advertisers a baseline assurance that Twitter dot com was not going to turn into a Nazi hellsite on his watch. Then Musk did something even stupider: he ended Twitter’s existing verification process so that anyone could buy “verification” for the grand fee of $8. One person – whose identity is still unknown – forked over $8 and created the handle @EliLillyandCo, and proceeded to tweet “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” The real Eli Lilly – the pharma company which uses @LillyPad, had to tweet out that no, insulin is not free and they’re going to continue to price-gouge diabetics for kicks.

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly clarified Thursday it is not offering free insulin, after a fake Twitter account—which was verified through Twitter Blue, a new subscription service implemented by Elon Musk— impersonating the brand said it was, a sign the new feature is causing confusion and misinformation to spread on the platform.

Twitter Blue launched Wednesday, giving any users who pay $8 a month the ability to be verified on the site, a feature previously only available to public figures, government officials and journalists as a way to show they are who they claim to be.

On Thursday, an account with the handle @EliLillyandCo labeled itself with the name “Eli Lilly and Company,” and by using the same logo as the company in its profile picture and with the verification checkmark, was indistinguishable from the real company (the picture has since been removed and the account has labeled itself as a parody profile). The parody account tweeted “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.”

Roughly two and a half hours later, the actual Eli Lilly corporate account tweeted apologizing “to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account,” and confirmed its real handle is @Lillypad.

Users who click on a profile’s check mark can see if they were verified through Twitter Blue or for being a public figure, though Musk said Thursday that “legacy” accounts will no longer be verified in the coming months, and only those who subscribe to Twitter Blue will be.

[From Forbes]

What’s absolutely incredible about this is not just that a parody account got verified and led to a massive public relations snafu for a pharma company which is already in (well-deserved) hot water over their price-gouging insulin costs. What’s incredible is that for $8, this Twitter parody account tanked Eli Lilly’s stock by the close of markets on Friday. Eli Lilly lost billions (on paper).

What could have been a somewhat anarchistic feel-good moment of the “little guy” tanking a pharma company for $8 turned into something else entirely though. Elon Musk can’t actually decide what he wants to be, because $44 billion apparently can’t buy him a personality. If I was in Musk’s position (perish the thought), I would have leaned into it and said “well, Eli Lilly shouldn’t price-gouge on insulin, Twitter is anarchy, let’s f–k some sh-t up.” Instead, Musk… sided with the price-gouging pharma company and argued to Bernie Sanders that companies should charge exorbitant rates for sh-t like insulin.

elon musk tried to correct bernie sanders on insulin prices but then got fact checked by his own website lol pic.twitter.com/eouPiqoUqv

— transgender marx (@JUNlPER) November 12, 2022

elon has created a system where you can pay $8 to publicly humiliate multibillion-dollar companies, what a time to be alive

— Brandon Hardin (@hardin) November 10, 2022

An anonymous tweeter pretending to be Eli Lilly & Co spent $8 to put out a fake tweet that insulin is now free. Eli Lilly lost $30 billion dollars in market cap today. This may very well be the best use of $8 in human history

— IG: @quentin.quarantino (@quentquarantino) November 11, 2022

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Zoe Kravitz is one of Elle Magazine’s Women in Hollywood covers and honorees. I’m not exactly sure why, it’s not like she had an amazing professional year – yes, she was in The Batman, and she has P-ssy Island coming out next year, but that’s about it. Culturally, it was actually a bad year for her. She attended the Oscars and she devoted a few Instagram posts to making catty comments about Will Smith, and the backlash on social media was immediate and wall-to-wall. Black Twitter had all of the receipts. After that, it took her four months to open her mouth in public again, and when she did, she tried to act like she was canceled and people should be able to have conversations, blah, etc. Nowadays, Zoe seems to want to turn the page from all of that. Some highlights from her Elle interview:

Writing & directing ‘P-ssy Island’: “The story has changed many times. I started writing it before Harvey Weinstein was exposed, so the world was different. It came from a very different place, and it did start very much like an angry feminist script. Then, as the world changed and the conversation evolved, I got to sit back and watch what was going on.”

On the role that changed everything: “Bonnie from Big Little Lies and then Selina Kyle from The Batman—those had the biggest impact. They changed what I had the opportunity to do. When Jean-Marc Vallée gave me that job [on Big Little Lies], I was working with some of the best actors of our time all of a sudden. I had access to a different audience and was able to learn from all of those amazing women.”

Her mentor: “Reese Witherspoon and I became very, very close after Big Little Lies. She’s such a strong businesswoman and is really driven to inspire and educate other women in the industry to take up more space. She’s someone who I admire and who I always call when I have a question or something I want to make or produce, or a book I want to adapt.”

What’s changed in Hollywood post-#MeToo: “We became trendy. It’s cool in a way. When I was trying to find a director of photography for my movie and I wanted a woman, I couldn’t find one. All of the DPs who are female are booked, because that’s cool now or because people are paying more attention. If people are afraid to say they didn’t like a piece of art because it was made by a women, it feels to me that we aren’t allowing it to truly affect us. Art isn’t about liking. It’s about emotion, debate. Art is about conversation.”

Her best advice: “Always challenge what people say you can and can’t do, and what parts are written for you. I used to be told I couldn’t have a role because they wanted a white girl. Now we’re in this place where you can only play a role if you are that identity, which I think is very complicated. Can a person who can see play a blind person? I don’t know the answer. It’s all very blurry. There’s not necessarily a right side and a wrong side. It’s almost like it was so bad for so long that now we have to sit in this uncomfortable place that also doesn’t make a lot of sense, trying to even things out. It’s just like, Who’s in charge and where do we draw the line? I don’t know the answer to that.”

On being a role model: “I don’t know if I could be considered a role model, but I think allowing yourself to be imperfect is probably the best thing you can do for yourself right now. In this time of social media where people constantly present perfection, that’s really important, so I try to allow myself to be as human as possible. We live in this time where people are triggered and people are sensitive. But then people are saying horrible, horrible things to each other on the internet. I don’t understand. It’s all about power.”

On social media: “Social media is a big experiment that we’re all participating in, and to pretend like we understand it is a joke. I have had my ups and downs with it. I’m sure it’s helped my career in some ways, but I also think it’s hurt it…. People confuse social media with reality. It’s not real. What I mean by that is that I think people feel that if they feel something and they don’t express it on social media, then it doesn’t count. If you care about something and you don’t talk about it on social media, then you don’t care about it. If you write about one thing but not another thing, you care about one more than the other. None of that’s real. Or true.”

[From Elle]

I’m sorry, what? “It’s almost like it was so bad for so long that now we have to sit in this uncomfortable place that also doesn’t make a lot of sense, trying to even things out…” She’s both-sides-ing representation? She thinks it’s an uncomfortable place that “doesn’t make a lot of sense” when people are like “only trans people should play trans characters” or “Asian actors should play Asian characters.” I also think it’s weird that she sees Big Little Lies as some kind of huge moment for her career, especially since a lot of people criticized how poorly written Bonnie was. It was also written for a white actress, and they just popped Zoe into the role. Color-blind casting, only for the worst role of the ensemble.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Elle.

I’ve become something of a late-in-life Brian Cox fan. I’d never really cared about him one way or the other as an actor before I got into Succession. It’s so funny to think that after a fifty-year career on stage and screen, Cox will probably be best known for playing a Scottish version of Rupert Murdoch on an HBO show. Cox’s take on Succession’s patriarch Logan Roy is brilliant, funny and infuriating. Cox is 76 years old and he’s using this Succession success to do interesting side projects, like his new docu-series, How the Other Half Live. He goes around to rich people’s homes and he looks at all of the crazy sh-t they have and it sounds like he shames them for being rich. Good times. To promote this new series, Cox chatted with the Telegraph about money, Hollywood, America and a lot more. Some highlights:

On Succession: “Logan is a very lonely man driven by one idea, and his Achilles heel is that he loves his children. If he didn’t love them, he could carry on in his mercenary ways, but it doesn’t work. It just exacerbates the situation. It is easy to describe [the characters] as monstrous, but they are also victims of a society and a value system. Even though it is brilliant satire, there’s a tragic element to them, too.”

Exploring the wealth divide in ‘How the Other Half Live’: The growing wealth divide is a “demon”, he says. “No matter what faith or gender we are, the thing we suffer from is our exposure to money and relationship to it.”

Whether he’s rich: “I’m doing well, but I’m not one of them. I’m not a multimillionaire. Having money makes you safe, but it makes you guilty at the same time. Which is why we need a proper welfare system.”

Whether he’s poor by Hollywood standards: He says his own vices are clothes, but no longer food, since he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. “I tend to fly publicly,” he adds. To paraphrase the journalist Tina Brown’s recent description of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, does he feel “poor by Hollywood standards?” “I don’t know where Tina Brown is living… but the Royal family are never going to be poor. We have this idea of Hollywood, but it’s simply untrue. There are a lot of very sad people there trying to make a buck. It’s a very difficult place to live. And Hollywood is the worst place in the world to raise female children. There are so many pressures on young women already, and it just exacerbates them.”

His weird experience at a Me Too meeting: “Let me tell you my Hollywood story. I got a Golden Globe [in 2020], which was lovely. Then, I was invited to this MeToo meeting. I arrived late, so I had to stand at the back while all these rather intense Hollywood women were listening to Ronan Farrow [the journalist] talk about the work he had done [exposing the sexual misconduct of Harvey Weinstein]. Then it finished. Everyone turned around and immediately took out their devices and started filming me, walking up to me and saying, ‘Can you tell us to f— off?’. I thought: ‘Is this appropriate? This is a MeToo meeting.’ This is the problem – that people do things on a tokenistic level. I find that questionable.”

He is pessimistic about the future of America: “I thought America was a great society to be part of because of its egalitarian principles. But have those principles been practised? Have they f—! I think there could very easily be an uprising in the United States.”

Whether his children will inherit much from him: “I have some property, so that will probably be divided up among them. They’ll have a safety net, as long as it’s not too much of a safety net, and they actually get out and work their a–es off. But it’s nothing to do with me. I’m gone by then!”

[From The Telegraph]

“I don’t know where Tina Brown is living… but the Royal family are never going to be poor…” Yeah. I mean, Tina Brown’s comment was about how the Sussexes are poor compared to the uber-wealthy in Montecito, but I appreciate that Cox brings it back to the enormous wealth held by the Windsors. I also think LA/Hollywood is probably a very difficult place to raise kids in general, especially girls. But honestly, name a place where it’s easy to raise girls?

As for his socialism… I don’t think money and our relationship to money is the root of all evil, but I do think there should be better and stronger welfare systems in place, especially here in America. So much would be solved here if we had tax policies which made sense and we actually punished white-collar criminals appropriately.

Photos courtesy of Olivier Huitel / Avalon and Euan Cherry / Avalon.

Hurricane Nicole has probably derailed Tiffany Trump’s Florida wedding and Tiff is “freaking out” about it. [Dlisted]
Mariah Carey is a big fan of Princess Diana & The Crown. [LaineyGossip]
Real talk, I loathed Carrie Bradshaw’s Vivienne Westwood wedding gown. [Go Fug Yourself]
Older folks navigating the internet = hilarious. [OMG Blog]
Fox News: The Democrats want women to stay single! [Jezebel]
There’s nothing heroic about Kanye West. [Pajiba]
Will anyone watch The Culpo Sisters? [Gawker]
Florence Pugh shows us that she’s still tight with her ex, Zach Braff. [Just Jared]
Dua Lipa, so pretty and such bad style. [Egotastic]
Donald Glover has a problem writing Black women characters. [Buzzfeed]
Real Housewives of the Potomac cast member has serious issues. [Starcasm]
The midterms were also awesome because there was a “Rainbow Wave.” [Towleroad]

While Peter Morgan and The Crown are always a tad too generous with how they cast the “Prince Charles” role, they’ve gotten it bang-on with casting actresses for Camilla Parker Bowles. Emerald Fennell played Camilla in Seasons 3 and 4, and I thought she was great at showing why she would appeal to Charles, and she showed Camilla as a real schemer too, manipulating both Diana and Charles. In the two new seasons, Camilla is played by Olivia Williams and once again, inspired casting. They tossed an unkempt ashy-blonde wig on Olivia and told her not to moisturize and it’s PERFECT. In Season 5, you really get how Camilla was just, at that time, a suburban mom with connections, openly carrying on with a married man. According to Dominic West and Olivia, Camilla is a sympathetic figure because… she was just a woman in love, and sometimes life is messy, I guess.

As for how the divorce will be portrayed, Dominic believes The Crown will be ‘more even-handed and fairer than the newspaper coverage at the time’. Olivia Williams, who takes over from Emerald Fennell to play Camilla in season five, agrees saying, ‘I don’t think it’s something the Palace should be frightened of. Peter Morgan is very careful to always turn these events back to how they affect the crown [not the individuals]. The series if called The Crown, not Charles or Diana.’

West added: ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time, when we were thinking about this divorce as it happened – there was an enormous sense of grievance in the public that this fairy-tale had been destroyed. I think now we realise Camilla was not a marriage breaker, she was not someone who was trying to deny us this fairy tale – she was just someone who was in love.’

Camilla, now the Queen Consort, has always been a divisive figure due to her role in the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage. But Olivia believes the new season will dispel ‘the trope of the marriage breaker that the press fed at the time’.

‘Anybody who has a perspective on divorce knows that the whole blame game becomes irrelevant,’ says Olivia. ‘And maybe now we see that [Charles and Diana’s] marriage wasn’t a great idea in the first place. I say that without any disrespect to any of the families involved – as Dominic says, hindsight is a valuable thing.’

Reportedly, season five of The Crown will include a recreation of the infamous ‘tampon-gate’ phone call, when intimate conversations between Charles and Camilla were leaked – no doubt a moment that the royals would rather forget.

‘Back then, a lot of what we learn about Charles and Camilla seemed in some way sordid, or not very appealing,’ says Dominic. ‘Very often it was a gross invasion of their privacy which feels very squeamish now – when you could read the text of their phone conversations, or ring up a hotline and listen to their phone conversations.’

Despite this, both Dominic and Olivia were struck by the romance between Charles and Camilla. ‘What we learnt playing those times and those events – was how actually rather sweet they were together and how romantic it was,’ says Dominic.

[From Grazia]

I genuinely disagree with this, but I find it interesting that Olivia and Dominic both seem to be arguing that the “original sin” was Charles and Diana’s marriage in the first place, that they were unsuited for each other and they both had every right to look elsewhere. But what I’m reminded of is not that Charles simply wanted to have an affair with Camilla, it’s that he was in love with Camilla throughout his courtship with Diana and throughout their marriage. Camilla was the “original sin” of Charles and Diana’s marriage. Camilla kept him trapped, but make no mistake, Charles kept going back to Camilla by his own choice too. People always criticize Diana for not being “okay” with Charles cheating on her, but it was perfectly clear that Charles was incapable of keeping up with the appearance of a happy marriage. It wasn’t enough that he was unfaithful, it was also that he treated Diana like sh-t, publicly and privately. Camilla knew exactly what she was doing too. Anyway! Rottweiler Apologia, I think not.

Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Crown.