Daniel Radcliffe stars in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story that begins steaming next week. It’s been well received so far. I didn’t know Evan Rachel Wood plays the “villain” in the film: Madonna – Ha! She and Daniel spoke to Newsweek to promote the project and veered into a discussion on being child stars. Evan started acting at age seven, earning a Golden Globe nomination at the age of 13. Daniel’s career, of course, went meteoric in the Harry Potter franchise at the age of 10. Daniel told Newsweek that if and when he has kids, he hopes they stay out of the spotlight. He’d be thrilled if they find another career in film, but he hopes fame passes them by.

Radcliffe started acting professionally at the age of ten before going on to international stardom when he was cast as Harry Potter. While he wouldn’t recommend young actors take the same path to stardom as he did, there were some perks to his upbringing.

“I want my kids, if and when they exist…I would love them to be around film sets,” he told Newsweek. “A dream would be for them to come onto a film set and be like ‘God, you know, I’d love to be in the art department. I’d love to be something in the crew.’ Some part of this, but not from that.”

“And also I think we’re saying this as people who have alright,” Radcliffe continued, referring to himself and Wood sat beside him, “and we’re still acting so clearly, we enjoyed it. But still, I wouldn’t want fame for my kid.”

[From Newsweek]

This isn’t exactly shocking coming from Daniel. We know that he struggled as a child actor. His experiences of feeling isolated within his fame sound bleak. I can understand not wanting to see his kids navigate that. Plenty of celebrity parents have said similar for their kids and they didn’t hit it big until they were at least legally adults. It’s nice, though, to see Daniel say he hopes his hypothetical children find appreciation for filmmaking. He still loves his job, he just doesn’t think it’s a place for kids.

Evan agreed with everything Daniel said. She went on to say that while she felt acting teaches kids empathy, how to be present and how to express themselves, she didn’t think “children should have ‘careers.’” I’ve had a job since I was 10 years-old by choice. If I had to go back and do it again, I would. But they were jobs, like cleaning, retail, waitressing until I got my ‘career’ jobs in my 20s. I think the distinction Daniel and Evan are making is important. A kid can pursue interests and even make some money, but they shouldn’t have to start managing their whole future with all its obstacles and pressures at such a young age.

Photo credit: Cover Images

A second woman came forward and said that Herschel Walker got her pregnant and paid for the abortion. There are more women out there, I’m sure. [Buzzfeed]
The proportions are off on Gigi Hadid’s blue suit. [GFY]
Mandy Moore shares a family photo with her kids. [Seriously OMG]
Did Gisele Bundchen issue one last ultimatum to Tom Brady? [Dlisted]
Shonda Rhimes talks about work and Grey’s Anatomy. [LaineyGossip]
I hope we see some celebrities wearing this Tom Ford collection. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Review of Ray and Raymond, on AppleTV. [Pajiba]
More photos of Rihanna at the Wakanda Forever premiere. [JustJared]
An update about a Breaking Amish star. [Starcasm]
Ron DeSantis is clearly already prepping his 2024 presidential run. [Towleroad]
Julia Fox has some thoughts on male hygiene. [Egotastic]
Oprah should endorse John Fetterman. [Gawker]

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I am so into Prince Harry’s memoir title. Spare is so… evocative and simple. It says so much about how Harry was raised, what he was told, how he was treated. The cover is fire too. Anyway, much like the initial news of Harry’s memoir last year, the story came out before the publisher was ready, then Penguin Random House and Prince Harry confirmed the news with a press release. I love that. So now we know the name of his memoir and we also know that it will be released in fifteen other languages, plus Harry will read the audiobook (HOT). I would imagine the pre-orders are already through the roof, and after more than a year of hand-wringing and whining, King Charles is in a full panic. While Buckingham Palace is not commenting on the record, their royal rota minions are already in full attack mode:

Richard Fitzwilliams: ‘It was never a good idea for Harry, fifth in line to the throne, a Counsellor of State and only 38, to write a memoir which by its nature would be highly controversial. There have been reports that the memoir has been toned down given the sensitivities involved. When it is published, Harry may well do interviews. It is likely to be extensively serialised. All of this will almost certainly be unhelpful to King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla, in the early months of his reign. It may well widen the rift between the royal family’s and the Sussexes in the pivotal period leading to King Charles’s coronation.

Mark Borkowski: ‘An advance is paid on a certain premise – the publishers would have seen the manuscript and got excited by it. So there’s always going to be a battle over the content. But could they have made substantial edits in time for January? Yes, in the modern world it’s very easy to get things changed and printed. The key period for selling books is Christmas. So they’ll be missing a lot of sales. January doesn’t strike me as an optimum time for a release, so that is significant – it would suggest there’s been a bit of a dispute over the content and Harry may have got his way.’

Tom Bower: ‘Profits demanded that the book be published as soon as possible after the Queen’s death. And the publishers were helped by the reality that neither Harry nor Meghan are prepared to terminate their campaign against the Royal Family,’ he told MailOnline. ‘To those who have speculated that Harry wanted to dilute his ghost-written text to remove the most offensive descriptions of Charles, William and Kate, one can only surmise that his book can only be a global commercial success if a healthy dollop of poison remains.

More from Tom Bower: ‘The damage to the Royal family will be great. Charles’s retaliation could include not giving their children their prince and princess titles, and even withdrawing their own titles of Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Certainly, Harry was warned that the Sussexes’ revenge would be answered in kind, so there is certain to be a nervous Christmas among the Royal family in Sandringham as they anticipate the worst. For the new King, still planning his coronation, this could not have come at a worse time.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I love how these dumbasses are arguing simultaneously that the memoir will be terrible for poor Charles, who is also enormously popular, so much so that Harry felt the need to soften the memoir. None of their arguments make any sense. I believed Omid Scobie when he reported that Harry completed Spare months ago and it had already gone through all of the legal checks. If Spare was pushed back, it was only for a month or so, and perhaps it was to change some verb tenses and titles following QEII’s passing. That’s what I believe – that it’s not like Harry was furiously rewriting huge chunks of the memoir in the past month, it was just making adjustments to the smaller details following his grandmother’s passing.

Oh, as for the idea that the book will be serialized… I doubt it will be in a British outlet? It’s far more likely that the publisher will send out some selections to American outlets though? Hm.

’Spare’ cover courtesy of Penguin Random House, additional photos courtesy of Travalyst and WENN.

Taylor Swift released the music video for “Antihero” last Friday. That’s her first single from Midnights, and… it’s not my favorite song, nor is it my favorite Swift music video. The idea behind the song and music video is to show all of the crazy late-night thoughts Taylor has when she can’t sleep, the midnight hours where all of her neuroses come out to play. In one scene, Taylor steps on a scale and, instead of showing a number, the scale reads “fat.” There was pushback online, and Taylor ended up having that small part edited out:

Taylor Swift’s music video for “Midnights” lead single “Anti-Hero” has been edited to remove a scene that shows her stepping on a bathroom scale that read “fat.”

Variety can confirm the music video on Apple Music no longer shows the scale, instead, Swift’s anti-hero clone just looks at her with a face of disappointment. The music video on YouTube still features the scale displaying “fat.”

Contacted by Variety, reps for Swift and Apple Music did not immediately have a comment.

Speculation surrounding the reasoning behind the removal of those frames comes from online debate over the scene, which has since been labeled by some as “anti-fat” because of the indication that being fat is a negative thing.

In an Instagram post promoting the release of the music video (which she wrote and directed), Swift says the visual treatment was reflective of her own “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts [playing] out in real time.” Within that context, the video matches the song’s introspective and analytical lyrics, which include lines such as “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby / And I’m a monster on the hill.”

Swift has talked about struggling with an eating disorder in the past, most extensively in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” In the film, Swift admits there have been times in the past (“It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it”) when she’s seen “a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or… someone said that I looked pregnant … and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.”

[From Variety]

Conceptually, I understand what Taylor was trying to do and say, and I suspect most women have those thoughts late at night, the thoughts of “I’m the problem, I’m fundamentally unloveable, I’m too this/I’m too that/he doesn’t like my body” etc. Taylor was being honest about her body dysmorphia, so I understand why she put that in the video. I also understand why she edited it out, because it’s difficult to argue “no, I’m not anti-fat, this is speaking to my own neurosis and my own body dysmorphia!”

Additionally, singer/artist Manuela accused Taylor of copying some of the imagery from her music video for “Glimmer.”

pic.twitter.com/ysKjcg9Zxi

— v (@ViralMaterialz) October 25, 2022

Photos courtesy of Taylor Swift’s ‘Antihero’ music video.

Omid Scobie’s Yahoo UK column this week is all about The Crown and the royal establishment’s collective freakout over The Crown. Just yesterday, I was thinking that there had been a strange lull in the freakout, almost as if Buckingham Palace had suddenly realized that maybe their campaign against Netflix was looking downright unhinged. I’m sure King Charles will rally and there will be another blitz of “Charles is so sad about The Crown” stories coming out just days and hours before the new season drops in less than two weeks. Which leads me to Scobie’s column and his very effective counterargument: that while The Crown is a fictional dramatization, Peter Morgan has based the show completely on extensive written records from the time.

Scobie on all of those royal “documentaries”: Without sounding dramatic, many of these supposedly authoritative specials have become superspreaders of misinformation on the royal beat. But you’ll be unlikely to hear many complaints about them. Right now, the energy for that is all aimed at The Crown, which is less than two weeks away from its season five premiere.

The Crown tackles the ‘90s, with receipts: This chaotic decade – which ended with public support for the monarchy at its lowest – became the House of Windsor’s worst in history. And thanks to how publicly many of its scandals played out, they’re also some of the most documented. But despite the abundance of material banked in historical archives, the push to label The Crown as a total work of fiction has become fiercer than ever. Just like many things (and people) initially embraced by The Firm, the show has now become the enemy.

On Judi Dench’s letter: Even legendary actress Dame Judi Dench spoke out, writing an open letter to The Times about the series’ “crude sensationalism” of history. Now, I’m a big fan of Dench’s work, but the decision to go out of her way to label the series as “cruelly unjust” has been… interesting. The letter, which asked for a disclaimer to appear at the start of the show, was written with no reference to her own award-winning depictions of the Queen’s great-great-grandmother in Victoria & Abdul and Her Majesty, Mrs Brown – true royal stories that received rave reviews but also criticism from certain historians about accuracy. Perhaps the letter reflects some regret on Dench’s behalf… or perhaps there’s more to the theory that her close friendship with Camilla, now the Queen Consort, is what led her to defend the Royal Family.

The British media is criticizing The Crown for using storylines they reported on at the time: As easy as it is to throw blame at producers and writers working on Peter Morgan’s creation, is it actually warranted? A closer look at some of the most breathlessly criticised plot lines in the forthcoming episodes reveal that a lot of what is currently being called into question by the media actually originated in the same media outlets currently leading the onslaught.

John Major’s tantrum: Former UK prime minister John Major was absolutely right to point out that stories suggesting Prince Charles came to him to discuss the Queen’s abdication are inaccurate, but mainstream media coverage of his comments have been missing the fact that this very rumour ran rife amongst royal correspondents at the time, making its way into gossip columns, biographies and even as far as the pages of the New York Times.

The Penny Knatchbull storyline: Outrage over a storyline involving rumours of an inappropriate friendship between the late Prince Philip and Penny Knatchbull has also been loud in the press. Some newspapers have done nothing to prevent such rumours spreading by writing suggestive stories about the countess’s ‘regular’ visits to his Sandringham home, how his “flirty bond” with the aristocrat “kept him young”, and details of their “highly personal” friendship.

The Crown is actually well-sourced & well researched: I’ve spent much of the past week watching the new season and while, due to a pesky embargo, I’m not allowed to share anything about it yet, I can say that a lot of this series takes its lead from information readily available in the public domain, be it on-the-record television interviews, Diana’s audio tapes to Andrew Morton, numerous biographies (including Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 book, which Charles co-operated with) and archival reporting from British newspapers.

The Windsors can’t blame anyone but themselves: It’s easy to sling mud at episodes few have actually seen yet, but in my opinion much of the scandal this season is sourced from one place: reality. I’d imagine that this is what scares the royal institution the most. Because while The Crown’s scripted dialogue comes straight from the writer’s room, and you’d be a fool to treat this show as a historical documentary, the majority of jaw-droppers in the plot come courtesy of the Royal Family and the press. And for those, they have no one to blame other than themselves.

[From Yahoo UK]

I actually didn’t know that the stories about Charles pressuring his mother to abdicate were widely reported at the time. I know he sat there, on camera, with Jonathan Dimbleby, and whined about how his mom needed to die (and in the same interview, he dithered when it came to talking about what he would do as king and why he wanted to be king). Charles believes he’s a lot slicker than he actually is, and this was back in the ‘90s, when Diana could effortlessly make him look like an a–hole all the time. Anyway, you get the point – the problem isn’t that Peter Morgan is making things up out of thin air to vilify Charles and the Windsors. The problem is that Morgan has a wealth of receipts and he’s choosing to soft-pedal the actual history, and even that soft-pedaling makes Charles look terrible. Because he was and is terrible.

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Posters & photos courtesy of Netflix, IG courtesy of EW.

This week was when it all fell apart for Kanye West professionally. The dominoes were already falling for weeks, with Anna Wintour cutting off Kanye, with the fashion industry types revolting against him. But then the hits just kept coming one after the other: Balenciaga dropped him, then Adidas, then the Gap. Adidas was the big one – Kanye’s Yeezy-Adidas line made him a billionaire on paper. Now that Adidas has dumped him, Kanye is only worth, what? Something like $400 million. That’s “poor” in Kanye’s world. Besides, Kanye craves one thing ahead of money: fashion industry legitimacy. The fashion world turning their backs on him is one of his biggest nightmares. So Kanye is desperate to recreate his Yeezy success at another brand. Which is why he turned up, without an appointment, at the Skechers headquarters.

Kanye West reportedly showed up uninvited to Skechers headquarters in Manhattan Beach, Calif., after Adidas gave him the ax for his recent barrage of anti-Semitic remarks. The disgraced fashion designer — who also goes by Ye — arrived Wednesday morning wanting to chat with executives at the sneaker company about potential business opportunities.

However, as Skechers explained in a statement, West was immediately turned away.

“[West] arrived unannounced and without invitation at one of Skechers’ corporate offices in Los Angeles,” the spokesperson said. “Considering Ye was engaged in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his party from the building after a brief conversation.”

Skechers — which has partnered with such celebrities as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Camila Cabello and even West’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian — is notably owned and operated by a Jewish family. Robert Greenberg founded it in 1992, while his son Michael Greenberg is the sitting president of the brand.

“Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West. We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech,” Skechers’ statement continued. “Again, West showed up unannounced and uninvited to Skechers corporate offices.”

[From Page Six]

Shoe companies are really going to have Kanye out on the street with a sign reading “will design ugly shoes for a billion dollars.” Seriously, it would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic and sad. Literally all Kanye had to do was not being an antisemitic, misogynistic bigot and he couldn’t do it. Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga – they were all fine with Kanye when he said slavery was a choice. They were fine with it when he was stalking and harassing his ex-wife and threatening to murder Pete Davidson. Kanye literally could have kept doing all of that and they would have let him keep his Adidas-Yeezy line and everything else. Again, I ask: is this finally Kanye’s rock bottom? Being escorted out of Skechers, a business operated by a Jewish family?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

From CB: The Amazon trash bags we featured last month are quite good, I would recommend them! They’re strong and the price is reasonable. I like unscented trash bags in the house, but I use these small kitchen-sized scented Glad trash bags outside in a little covered can for the dog poo bags. (These are the best dog waste bags!) I received some of those Glad bags as part of a housewarming package from the realtor and after using them for the dog waste I didn’t want to go back to unscented ones. Here are some more things Hecate and I are looking at on Amazon.

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Here are some photos from last night’s big premiere event for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. If I can have a moment to rant, I hate that so few photo agencies have pictures from the premiere. This started happening a lot during the pandemic, specifically with Disney films: mostly closed red carpets, with only a handful of carefully selected photographers on the carpet. That way, Disney is able to exert control over the red carpet photos too, which just… sucks. It sucks for people (like us) who want to see all of the looks and all of the angles and give away all of this free movie promotion. But I guess Disney and Marvel know what they’re doing.

I’m including photos of some of the biggest names at the premiere, including Lupita Nyong’o, Rihanna, Michaela Coel, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Angela Bassett. Some fashion notes… Lupita wore Balmain, Rihanna wore Rick Owens, Letitia in a suit (perhaps telegraphing that she “suits up” as Black Panther??!?) and Michaela in a custom Ferragamo look.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

Matthew Perry has written a memoir called Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. Perry details his addiction issues and how much he spent fighting for his sobriety. He also talks a lot about Friends and all of the celebrities he’s known/dated over the years. I had no memory of Perry knowing the late River Phoenix, but they worked together in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon and became friends. Perry wrote about finding out that River died, and Perry chose that moment in his memoir to tastelessly note “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry also makes another reference to wishing Keanu would die later in the book. It’s bizarre – it reads like he’s trying to make an awkward joke, but it comes across as deeply unkind and rather macabre. Well, now Perry is apologizing.

Matthew Perry is clearing the air. Earlier this week — and ahead of the release of his new upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing — several excerpts of the book were released by Variety and The New York Post, with both outlets sharing sections where he talks about Keanu Reeves.

In one section, Perry, 53, is talking about his friendship with the late actor River Phoenix and writes, “River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”

But the Friends actor now says he misspoke. In a statement to PEOPLE, Perry says: “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu. I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”

Reeves is cited again in the upcoming book when Perry writes about the death of comedian Chris Farley. “His disease had progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share),” Perry writes. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us.”

[From People]

Yeah, I think he was trying to “joke” and it didn’t land. Perry thought it would be supercool to start some kind of random beef with Keanu Reeves and he was surprised the general public found it disgusting. Keanu is one of the most low-key and well-liked people in Hollywood, so of course people have his back. Beyond that, Keanu has had so much f–king heartbreak and grief in his life, and he carries those sorrows around every day. Why would you even put that out into the universe, the idea that Keanu is the one who should have died? That’s completely horrible.

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instagram.

The leak about Prince Harry’s memoir came in the summer of 2021. I always believed that Harry and Penguin Random House didn’t intend for the news to come out at that moment, but they hastily arranged a confirmation, with Harry issuing a statement about his intent for writing the memoir. In the roughly fifteen months that followed the leak and confirmation, the British media has been beside themselves, hand-wringing and whining, threatening and lying. Personally, I had my fingers crossed for a November release just to be able to move on from this neverending “what’s in the book?!” melodrama at long last. It looks like Harry’s memoir has been pushed back about a month though – the NY Times reports that it will come out on January 10, 2023.

It seemed like a sure thing, or as close to a sure thing as is possible in book publishing: Prince Harry, who was living in self-imposed exile after his stormy exit from the British royal family, was writing a tell-all. After months of frenzied speculation, the book has a publication date: Jan. 10, 2023, according to industry executives.

The memoir, the first in a competitive multi-book deal with Penguin Random House, was initially scheduled for late 2022 and expected to be a blockbuster. It was part of a broader push by Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to build their brands as media moguls: Beyond the book contract, with a rumored price tag of at least $20 million, the couple signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify.

After the death of Queen Elizabeth II last month, any attacks the memoir might make on members of the royal family, or the monarchy, could strike many readers as unseemly. Prince Harry has gotten cold feet about the memoir’s contents at various points, book industry executives with knowledge of the process told The Times, and the project has been shrouded in rumors, delays and secrecy.

The memoir will be published at a delicate moment for the British monarchy and public, which is still adjusting to King Charles III and reeling from economic and political instability. Its release also thrusts Prince Harry into an impossible situation. Damaging revelations could hurt the monarchy and his relationship with his family. But holding back could dampen sales, making it more difficult for his publisher to recoup its considerable costs — and could erode Harry’s self-made image as the rebellious, truth-telling prince.

“Is his goal to enhance his celebrity with a certain sector of the public, or is it to repair the rift with his family?” said the literary agent Matt Latimer, co-founder of the Javelin agency, which represents politicians and public figures like James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., and John Bolton, the former national security adviser. “Those are competing goals to some extent, and it’s hard to do both.”

Penguin Random House declined to comment. A representative for Harry and Meghan also declined to comment.

“Don’t forget, the British royal family is there by consent, they need to earn and keep the respect of the British public,” said Valentine Low, a journalist and the author of “Courtiers: Intrigue, Ambition and the Power Players Behind the House of Windsor.” “If that is ever damaged in a fundamental and permanent way, that could be very serious.”

[From The NY Times]

What is the NY Times doing here? “Any attacks the memoir might make on members of the royal family, or the monarchy, could strike many readers as unseemly”…? Unseemly like the new Princess of Wales looting the dead queen’s jewelry before the body was even cold? Unseemly like Queen Elizabeth’s son selling off her prized racehorses? Unseemly like Charles, Camilla, William and Kate yukking it up and prancing around, taking Drab Four portraits the night before the Queen’s funeral? That kind of unseemly?

“Is his goal to enhance his celebrity with a certain sector of the public, or is it to repair the rift with his family?” I didn’t know literary agents needed grown men to supplicate themselves before their dysfunctional and racist families? What business is it of Rando Literary Agent if Harry repairs the rift with his family?

Anyway, since it’s the New York Times, I suspect that the release date is true. I hate that the British media now has a two-month-plus lead time to wage a smear campaign on Harry ahead of the release.

Update: Holy crap, apparently Harry’s memoir is titled Spare. AMAZING. Penguin Random House just confirmed the release date too, so it looks like the NYT got it right. Look at this cover!!!

We are excited to announce the remarkably personal and emotionally powerful story of Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.

SPARE, the highly anticipated #PrinceHarryMemoir, will be published on January 10, 2023. Learn more at https://t.co/L0I4CT4flH pic.twitter.com/iqdBjBwkWE

— Random House Group (@randomhouse) October 27, 2022

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.