We have so many Kristen Stewart stories today because she’s promoting the American limited release of her Cesar-Award-winning performance in Clouds of Sils Maria. She’s been giving interview and most of the quotes are interesting. There’s enough stuff to nitpick, if you feel like it, or you can just let Kristen’s ART wash over you. She genuinely seems to be in a good place in her life right now and you can feel her happiness in some of the new interviews. Speaking of, People Magazine has a “source” (perhaps Kristen’s publicist) who had some words to say about Kristen’s state of mind in the wake of the widespread reports that her ex-boyfriend, Robert Pattinson, is engaged to FKA Twigs. The source says:

“Kristen is doing fine, working and traveling, and she will survive Robert’s engagement. She has her own life and has moved on. Kristen lives a much more low-key life now and seems happier. It was obvious that she was struggling with the media attention [during her relationship with Rob].”

[From People]

Sure. I don’t think anyone doubted that Kristen would “survive” if her ex got engaged. The mere fact that some sourc/publicist phrased it that way gave me pause though. Now I’m actually wondering if Sparkles’ engagement has bothered her more than I previously believed.

Meanwhile, Kristen has a new interview with THR – you can read the full piece here. It’s well-written and sympathetic. Some highlights:

She doesn’t have Oscar dreams: “I’ve never, ever been like, ‘One day, I’m gonna win an Oscar.’ Truly, my ‘one day’ was always, ‘I’m gonna be a director! One day, I’m gonna direct movies!’”

On winning the Cesar: “I’ve taken so much sh-t that I’m just like, ‘I’m not the winner!’ I’m not gonna be let down when I don’t get the pat on the back. I’m totally used to the kick in the ass…[But] Oh, man, it blew my head off, to be honest. I couldn’t believe that I got nominated, and then obviously I really, really couldn’t believe that they gave it to me, because those people rigidly dole out praise, especially to Americans. It felt really good.”

Being criticized for lip-biting and being twitchy: “I’m fully and 100% subject to that…It has taken serious adjustment time…There’s just nothing that I can really do about that.”

The rumor mill/gossip: “If you think about the source of it all, which is really the big, big, big green monster of cash, there’s just no way that that’s stopping. It’s a new industry — celebrity news is a whole new form of entertainment — and it’s a huge, booming, f—ing money-making industry, so why would it stop? I love what I do and so it’s worth protecting. Hopefully, one day people’s priorities will shift a little bit. Unfortunately, onto somebody else.”

She’s happy to get older: “Actresses go crazy when they feel like they want to hold on to what used to be, or whatever. I’m so satisfied and happy and absolutely looking forward to what’s to come. Talk to me when I’m 30, and then I’ll be like, ‘Ahhhhh!’”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

There’s nothing she can do about lip-biting? I mean, I know what she’s saying, there’s nothing she can do about people criticizing her for random stuff. But she actually could try to limit her on-screen and off-screen lip-biting. As for her humility about awards and never having the goal of winning an Oscar… do you believe her? I mostly believe her. She hustles for her films (to her credit), and that sometimes includes going to events for the Hollywood Foreign Press and Oscar-type screenings. Do I think somewhere, deep inside of the Lip-Biter, maybe she does want to win an Oscar one day? Sure. But I can’t slam her for it. She honestly has a better chance at winning an Oscar than, say, KELLAN LUTZ.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Some bunny’s a cutie!

Vanessa Lachey took to Instagram on Easter Sunday to share the first photo of her daughter. Dressed for the occasion, Brooklyn Elisabeth, 3 months, looked adorable in a white knit rabbit hat and matching bottoms complete with a fuzzy tail.

“Happy Easter!” the proud mom captioned the image.

Brooklyn’s papa, 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey, also dressed up in a full rabbit costume for the holiday.

“Happy Easter to all!!! #SillyRabbit,” he Instagrammed the fun photo.

Nick and Vanessa welcomed their daughter on Jan. 5. She joined big brother Camden John, 2.

View Slideshow »»

View All Photos »»

Ever since Brian Williams imploded in one of the most spectacular career nose-dives I’ve ever seen, I’ve been waiting to hear “the inside story.” You knew it was coming, and here it is. Vanity Fair has an epic, insider-y media story on just what went down with Williams’ implosion and who is to blame – you can read the full piece here. Vanity Fair honestly excels at this kind of reporting, and they got many NBC insiders and executives to go on the record about everything going on behind the scenes. Williams wasn’t the only one getting slammed though – many inside NBC believe that Comcast is to blame (Comcast bought NBC in 2011), and some blame NBC News chief Deborah Turness for letting “the on-air talent” run wild. People aren’t just mad at Brian Williams either – it seems like Matt Lauer is pretty hated within NBC too. Here’s one excerpt from VF’s story:

Deborah Turness learned the startling news: the most important person at the network, the face of NBC News, its anchorman Brian Williams, had apparently been exaggerating an anecdote about coming under fire in a U.S. Army helicopter during the Iraq war in 2003. A reporter from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes had called about it that morning. Williams was supposed to talk to him off the record in an effort to determine what the reporter planned to write. Instead, to the dismay of NBC’s P.R. staff, Williams had gone on the record and admitted he hadn’t been telling the truth, not only on a Nightly News broadcast the previous week but also over the years at public appearances and on talk shows.

Stunned, Turness was still trying to grasp the gravity of the situation when the Stars and Stripes story went online. At that point her biggest concern was the apology Williams was preparing to read to viewers on his broadcast that evening. He was already taping segments as he and Turness began swapping e-mails on its all-important wording. Turness and the other executives who had gotten involved quickly became frustrated, as they would remain for days, with Williams’s inability to explain himself. “He couldn’t say the words ‘I lied,’ ” recalls one NBC insider. “We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied.’ He couldn’t explain what had happened. [He said,] ‘Did something happen to [my] head? Maybe I had a brain tumor, or something in my head?’ He just didn’t know. We just didn’t know. We had no clear sense what had happened. We got the best [apology] we could get.”

And that was a problem. Because the apology Williams read on the air that evening not only failed to limit the damage to his reputation, and to NBC News, its elliptical wording—“I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago”—made a bad situation worse, inflaming a crisis that led a week later to Williams’s suspension for six months.

[From Vanity Fair]

It’s sort of amazing that Williams thought the NBC Nightly News was his personal venue to handle his personal crisis without any input from anyone else. It sounds like everyone around Williams was like “Dude, just fall on your sword, say you lied and let’s move past this.” And he just refused. Oh, and “brain tumor”? Dude… no.

What else is in the article? Let’s see… a “former top NBC exec” lays the blame completely at Comcast, saying their takeover has been “a nightmare.” Another executive is quoted saying this: “News is a very particular thing, NBC is a very particular beast, and Deborah, well, she really doesn’t have a f–king clue. She’s letting the inmates run the asylum. You have kids? Well, if you let them, they’ll have ice cream every night. Same thing in TV. If you let the people on air do what they want, whenever they want, this is what happens.” Another “former executive” says it’s not Turness’ problem because she “walked into a complete sh-tstorm” and “Today is a horror show. Brian Williams? He didn’t give a rat’s ass what Deborah Turness says.”

Sigh… I love it when a situation gets so terrible that everyone (even those even tangentially involved) starts sniping at each other in the press. Super professional for these world-class news professionals, right?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I love playing the long blind riddle game. Just to get a little inside baseball for a minute, those are the ones I get the gloatiest about. Because they come without a set of leading photos. And they’re unexpected… until they gradually reveal themselves. Sometimes it takes a few months. Sometimes…      

I recently discussed Azealia Banks’ Playboy interview where she alienated almost everyone. She ranted against America, fat people, straight people, gay people, athiests, and men. The piece was an epic mess, and that’s exactly what Azealea wanted to happen. That’s the weird thing about Azealea. She’s a thinker and an occasionally insightful one, but her delivery of any message is awful. She ends up insulting everyone and ruining any tiny ounce of truth that comes out of her mouth. And it’s impossible to give her any credit (for anything) when she regularly spouts anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual rants on Twitter. The last I heard about Banks, she was sending out photos of various body parts to male bloggers who criticized her Playboy interview. No joke.

This new Billboard interview is slightly more nuanced. For one thing, Banks quickly dismisses her foil, Iggy Azalea, with a simple, “she just sucks” and moves onto other topics. Perhaps Banks is learning to not dig herself into the deepest of holes. I won’t deny that Azealia Banks is an incredibly talented rapper. She’s also an incredibly unpleasant, hateful person. So there’s plenty of WTF in this interview:

The responses to her Playboy interview: “It’s the responses to what I say that prove my point. I was making a joke because American culture is very gluttonous. We’re very, like, Big Gulp. You want Cup O’ Noodles? Here’s 24 in a box. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but who cares? When you fail, you’ve got to fail fast.”

On her issues with labels: “I felt like a caged animal. I’m this twentysomething who just became a millionaire, and I’m just like, ‘F***, where’s my album?’ Things started to blend together, and I was driving myself past certain points of insanity.”

Her work process: “I drink, I smoke weed, I don’t really bathe. I might go off … talk to myself in the mirror for hours. It’s a sort of psychosis. I work during witching hours, 3 a.m., 4 a.m., when the dead writers, the failed writers and the failed musicians who are dead are roaming around.”

She wants reparations: “That’s the only way black people are going to move forward. I get what people like Pharrell are saying, like, ‘Oh, you just have to work hard, but we aren’t given the tools.’ But he’s implying that he is the first and only person to ever try, and if you try like him, then you can get to the top of the ivory tower. It doesn’t work that way. You and I, Pharrell, we have assimilated. We’re the most nonthreatening black people. Well, obviously, I’m very threatening. But I’m harmless. I wouldn’t, like, run you over with my f***ing car.”

On Barack Obama: “He’s so fine. Those big-a** white teeth and ears hanging off his head? I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I want to f*** the president.’”

Her usual bedmates: “I sleep with my security guards. I love security guards. They’re these big meathead bald white guys with blue eyes. And I have had sex with a lot of my female friends. It’s a proximity thing. It’s why I am going to call my next record Business and Pleasure, because I’m always mixing the two.”

[From Billboard]

A few of Banks’ associates chime in during the interview to call her “a tortured artist.” I think she’s incredibly self-defeating.

Banks has more to say, including her expanded feelings on Kendrick Lamar’s statements about Ferguson. The rest of the interview is bizarro-land. She talks about doing witchcraft on an ex-boyfriend and gives tips on cooking chicken soup. She insists that she’s not anyone’s idol, but it would sure be nice if people “celebrated” her because she’s a celebrity. Did you see the part up there where Banks claimed to be a millionaire? Ha. If she hadn’t gotten herself canned from two record contracts, that could be true.

Photos courtesy of Ramona Rosales/Billboard & WENN

Happy Birthday Manon, the “young and cool” aunt, with love from Mélissa!

To Jenn from Michelle – Happy 30th Birthday! Love the “Riggins” in your life. He has a great face!

“Happy slightly belated birthday to our beautiful, sweet, funny and lovely Andrea. Your friends in gossip and EARS h…      

Dear Gossips,

Have you seen the Game Of Thrones-Sesame Street parody yet?

“The monster is blue and full of errors.”

It’s so smart. It’s always so smart. I think, um, it might be smarter (and funnier) than Funny Or Die.

Finally though. Finally we’re almost there. Season 5 in 5 slee…      

Did you know that Octavia Spencer writes books? She writes the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective tween series. The second book in the series has just been released, and Octavia was apparently doing a book signing at The Grove in LA last week, only it didn’t go so well. Allegedly. Here’s the thing: I’m willing to make the leap and say it’s perfectly possible that Octavia Spencer was a total diva at a book signing. But I cannot sign off on the level of vitriol being leveled at her in this Daily Mail article, even if they are just quoting from named and unnamed sources. Here’s the Mail’s piece on the situation:

Octavia Spencer shocked and angered hundreds of fans at a recent book signing, acting like an ‘ungrateful b****,’ say eyewitnesses who were so incensed with the actress’s behavior they stormed out and demanded refunds. Spencer was at Barnes & Noble bookstore at The Grove in Los Angeles last week to autograph copies of her children’s book ‘Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective — The Sweetest Heist in History.’ But before the night was over people were dragging their kids out of line, demanding refunds on the books and stormed out of the store in disgust.

‘Octavia was mean, rude and horrible to everyone,’ former Octavia fan, Angel Guzman explained to the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. ‘Initially, there was a Q & A but Octavia acted like she was forced to be there and she took her anger out on all of us, including the kids. Octavia’s answers were short and blunt and there were times she rolled her eyes to the back of her head like she couldn’t believe someone could ask such a stupid question. It quickly became a very uncomfortable situation for all of us. It was clear they just needed to proceed to the autographs because Octavia was not responding well at all to the questions.’

Octavia was scheduled to autograph her books from 7-9 p.m. but she was complaining the moment she arrived about the space they put her in, the ‘tiny glass of water’ she was given, that her feet were hurting so she took a long bathroom break, leaving everyone to wonder if she left or not.

‘Octavia was acting like a diva. She was mad because the event coordinator gave her a small glass of water but she wanted a large liter of ‘good water’ and demanded to know why she was being treated this way,’ Guzman continued. ‘All of this happened in front of everyone who has been standing there for at least an hour, with their restless kids, waiting for her to show up. Octavia didn’t acknowledge the crowd in any way; she just showed up and started to complain. But when the she finally started to sign the books is when things went from bad to worse.’

Ordinarily, celebrities allow their fans to take a picture with them at these book signings, but Octavia said no touching, no coming around the table to take a pic with her and she also refused to have small talk with anyone — just give her the book to sign and keep it moving. And she didn’t even want to ask the customer what was their name, they had to tell the assistant standing nearby their name, she wrote it on a sticky pad and handed it to Octavia, who then signed the book and slid it over to the edge of the table for pickup, like it was a fast food window.

After watching Octavia being abrupt and rude to several people one woman grabbed her 8-year-old and stormed off yelling, ‘This woman is an ungrateful, nasty b****! I’m getting a refund on this stupid book. If she talked to me or my child like that it would get really ugly in here so it’s best we get our money back and go home before something jumps off.’

[From The Daily Mail]

As I said, I’m willing to travel down this path and say that Octavia was maybe having a bad night, or maybe she was tired of being treated like communal property, or hey, maybe she didn’t want people touching her and she wanted to keep the autograph line moving quickly because she wasn’t expecting so many people. But the level of vitriol is… unsettling. You know who else was reportedly a major diva during her book tour? Lea Michele. But we didn’t have eyewitness accounts calling Lea an “ungrateful, nasty bitch.” That’s really over-the-top, right?

Oh, and Octavia responded to this story on her Twitter, writing:

Gotta laugh when ppl would acutally believe that you were rude to a child… at YOUR CHILDREN’S BOOK SIGNING.

— octavia spencer (@octaviaspencer) April 6, 2015

Huh.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Above and below are the latest photos of Bethenny Frankel at the beach in Miami. They’re from this weekend and last week. We seem to get new photos of her in a bikini once a month, or roughly corresponding with her promotional schedule. Bethenny was a guest on The Today Show yesterday. She’s one of many celebrities promoting books out this spring, and hers is a self-help tome called I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To: 10 Rules for Not Screwing Up Your Happily Ever After. A woman involved in a contentious, public divorce who has short, high profile flings with younger men has published a relationship book. Radar has some salacious details from the book, which include Bethenny’s tips for self pleasuring. It’s TMI but that’s her thing, and she’s not wrong.

In her Today Show interview, Bethenny explained that she wrote a relationship book because she “learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.” She also claimed “I can still give advice on something that I’ve made a lot of mistakes in” and added “do as I say not as I’ve done.” I guess celebrities can do just about anything regardless of whether they have a clue about it or not.

She says she has a gift for writing
I do feel that, when I’m going through something, I write. It’s kind of like it pours out of me… so now I’m going through something, if I can help people and talk about what I’m going through and express it, which I do think that I have a gift for, I think it’s great. And I really do love this book so much and all of the practical advice in it.

Claims she was offered Shark Tank, Cinderella and DWTS
People say that because of the failure of my talk show I had to come back [to RHONY]. I was offered Shark Tank and Dancing With the Stars and Cinderella, but I wanted to go home again. I really never thought I’d go back. It had gotten to a point where I didn’t enjoy it anymore. Now I’m so glad that I waited, because I’m really enjoying it. I respect the women, I respect what everyone’s going through… Some of [the women] I’ve known for so many years and it feels like I’m going back to high school.

On criticism of her weight
People do comment a lot. I do say ‘yeah, I am thin.’ I mean, I have a brand called Skinnygirl, so it’s not a big giant mystery. You can’t please everybody. You try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. Sometimes I do agree that I look too thin, especially when I’m tired, especially when I’m haggard. I do eat. There are nutritionists that comment that I don’t even weigh a hundred pounds. I weigh 115 pounds. I’ll be happy to get on the Today show scale.

“People don’t talk about people that are overweight”
People don’t talk about people that are overweight. If someone thought you were overweight imagine being like ‘wow, that person looks really overweight’ and keep talking about it, that wouldn’t be nice. But that’s not something I’m going to complain about.

[From The Today Show via US Weekly]

People do talk about celebrities who are overweight. Look at the idiots who are bashing Kelly Clarkson after she had a baby. As far as Bethenny’s weight, she is 5’7? tall, so at 115 pounds her Body Mass Index is 18, which is under the 18.5 cutoff for being in the normal weight range. She is technically underweight. I know that the BMI guidelines are inadequate for measuring lean body mass, etc, but if anything they err on the side of labeling very fit, muscular people overweight. As for Bethenny’s argument that she runs a company called “Skinny Girl,” she’s used that one before. Plus she’s written a diet book, she constantly stages bikini photo ops, she’s posed in her daughter’s clothing on social media, and she’s compared herself to a skeleton. She wants the validation that comes with people calling her skinny.

Oh and I watch Shark Tank. I doubt Bethenny has the business skill or the capital to be on the investors panel.

Here’s Bethenny’s Today Show interview:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Photo credit: FameFlynet

Yesterday, I wrote about Mindy Kaling’s douchey brother Vijay and how Vijay claims he did a half-assed social experiment by “pretending to be black” to see if it was easier for him to get into medical school. To hear Vijay tell it, his social experiment was a wild success because one medical school accepted him, even though Vijay had claimed to be African-American (with a name like Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam). Anyway, Vijay sounded like a douchebag and – just my opinion – pretty racist. I wrote at the end of the post, “Ugh. Mindy, come get your brother.”

Here’s the thing: I actually like Mindy a lot and I think she has interesting and often thought-provoking things to say about race, feminism, sexism, sizeism, the media and Hollywood power. Does Mindy get it 100% right all the time? No, but I believe she actually deeply considers what she says publicly and I believe she really is a tolerant and small-l liberal woman. Yesterday, I would have said that Mindy was probably justifiably horrified by Vijay’s “experiment”. And as it turns out, she is. She’s throwing him under the bus, publicly:

Mindy Kaling’s rep tells Us Weekly: “Mindy has been estranged from her brother for years. She was not aware of his decision to apply to medical school under a different name and race.”

[From Us Weekly]

Ouch. Just… ouch. Considering the brevity of the statement, I have to think that this is Mindy’s attempt to cut all ties altogether. She’s not her douche-brother’s keeper. We shouldn’t judge her on his shenanigans. Still, that’s got to be hard for her. She and Vijay lost their mom several years ago too, and it’s a loss Mindy still feels very deeply. It must suck to not have a relationship with her brother now too.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.