This weekend, the British media was full of royal stories, most of them recycled. Three royal books by Angela Levin, Valentine Low and Katie Nicholl were all excerpted in British newspapers and tabloids. I honestly hit the wall over the weekend as I tried to keep up with all of the headlines, especially because there’s something profoundly disturbing about their superficial, zero-context stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in particular. Make no mistake, Harry and Meghan are still the biggest “sellers” for the royal writers. I read the excerpt of Valentine Low’s Courtiers book in the Times, and it was just a litany of “courtiers” whining about how Meghan was sometimes brusque with the idiots and incompetent dumbasses in Kensington Palace. The Times didn’t excerpt this big headline though, which is that Valentine Low spoke to the same people who were sent out to Robert Lacey last year. Lacey had Kensington Palace employees – high-ranking ones – telling him that Meghan is “unhinged” and a “narcissistic sociopath.” Guess what those same KP courtiers told Low?

Things got so bad between Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their royal staff that they called her a “narcissistic sociopath.” They also reportedly said on repeated occasions: “We were played.”

The fresh revelations are contained in the second extract from the London Times royal correspondent Valentine Low’s new book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, in today’s Sunday Times.

Part of the problem of dealing with Meghan’s alleged bullying, according to one source, was the supposed gentility and civility of palace staff (which Meghan would likely contest too). “When someone decides not to be civil, they have no idea what to do. They were run over by her, and then run over by Harry,” a source told Low.

Meghan had a bad relationship with Edward Young, the then-queen’s private secretary, and Clive Alderton, Charles’ private secretary. “As things started to go wrong,” a source told royal biographer Robert Lacey, “Meghan came to perceive Young as the inflexible, bureaucratic figure who summed up what was [wrong] with the BP [Buckingham Palace] mentality, and the feeling was mutual. Young really came to dislike Meghan’s style.” Harry would send them “horrible emails.”

Former staff tell Low they believe Meghan manipulated and constructed the narrative herself of being rejected by royals to suit the later narrative she would tell after she and Harry had quit their roles as senior royals—including then claim she had considered suicide and been universally ignored when she sought help.

These staff, write Low, “came to be so disillusioned that they began to suspect that even her most heartfelt pleas for help were part of a deliberate strategy that had one end in sight: her departure from the royal family. They believe she wanted to be able to say ‘Look how they failed to support me.’”

Cohen particularly said it was vital that staff recorded the “duty of care” they had offered Meghan. When the duchess reported her concerns to HR, the staff were clueless as to why—HR was for staff matters, not members of the family. Meghan going to HR was seen as her “laying a trail of evidence.”

“Everyone knew that the institution would be judged by her happiness,” one former staff member told Low. “The mistake they made was thinking that she wanted to be happy. She wanted to be rejected, because she was obsessed with that narrative from day one.”

[From The Daily Beast]

This is simply abusive. I don’t know how else to talk about it anymore. The fact that William and Charles’s staffers are still running around and saying with their whole f–king chests that Meghan is a sociopath because she asked for help, because she kept receipts, because she begged these awful people to take care of her while she was pregnant. They’re turning it around on her, like she orchestrated the smears on herself, like she *wanted* to be harassed, torn to shreds and driven to suicide. What these palace operatives have done for years is beyond grotesque, it’s criminal.

Again, as soon as the first reports of Meghan’s “bullying” came out (just days before the Oprah interview aired), Meghan’s lawyer asked the palace for further details and their records. The palace refused. Just as the palace refused to release information about their internal investigation into Meghan’s bullying. If the palace has all of this evidence, has all of these records of Meghan’s abusive behavior, all of these records of how Meghan “played” them, then why are they still whining as unnamed sources to Valentine Low and Robert Lacey?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

As Hecate reported last week, Sharon Osbourne has a new documentary out called Sharon Osbourne: To Hell & Back. It’s on Fox Nation and none of us is going to watch it but we might report on secondary coverage, as predictable as it is. It seems to be about Sharon making herself out to be the victim after she outed herself as a racist on The Talk, refused to take accountability or listen and got fired for it. She’s since moved back to England and is working over there continuing to be racist. Yahoo has an interview with Sharon ahead of her documentary and she has predictably learned nothing and is trying to cash in on it.

Osbourne gets real with Yahoo Entertainment about being cut from the Emmy-winning CBS daytime talk show after 11 seasons amid a racism controversy, and says she’ll probably never work again in the U.S. after being what she deems “canceled.” She and husband Ozzy recently announced they’re moving back to their native England.

“I was thinking to myself: This is gonna be it,” she recalls of her March 2021 firing. “Over 50 years working in this industry and this is going to be it. This is it. I’m gonna go out as a racist? I found it so heartbreaking. And it was like: Why, why did this happen? Why?”

She tells us all she has left is her truth having lost her job and credibility when CBS’s internal investigation determined her behavior “did not align with [company] values.”

“Let’s be truthful about this: They destroyed my credibility in America,” she says. “Let’s be really truthful. It’s like: I have nothing to be afraid of. Their allegations were wrong and were twisted and distorted.”

Osbourne, who says she wasn’t repentant enough for the network, continues, “We weren’t dealing with a company that runs, you know, religious programming. This company is like every other — ruthless — and will do whatever they have to do to not have any stain on their network. They [don’t want] anything that’s going to rock the boat…”

Asked if she considered suing CBS, she tells us, “Sure I could have. But do I want to waste two, three years of my life on them? No, I don’t want to do that. For what?” She also scoffs as reports she left the network with a payout. She says she got “nothing … a ‘see ya.’ It was like in the movies when people get let go [and] you take out your box full of stuff. That was it.”

[From Yahoo!]

Sharon also told Yahoo! that she’ll never make up with Sheryl Underwood because she’s “not a friend”. She won’t talk to Leah Remini either, who revealed that Sharon used a homophobic slur against Sara Gilbert and a racist slur about Julie Chen, because Remini is “cray cray” and she’s scared of her.

I don’t believe that Sharon didn’t get a payout as she claimed to Yahoo. Page Six reported that her payout was between $5 to $10 million so I would guess she at least received her salary for the rest of the year. Plus how is she facing consequences when she went back to England and got another job as panelist so quickly? I hope she’s right that she’ll never work in the US again. Good riddance.

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It’s so funny to me to think that the Windsors were gleefully spreading around their own wishful thinking as “fact” in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Royal sources were eager to tell British outlets that they believed many books and projects would be put on hold, rewritten or canceled altogether. Instead, Katie Nicholl’s book is already making headlines, as is Valentine Low’s and Angela Levin’s. I have every reason to believe that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s projects were only paused temporarily for a couple of weeks. And Netflix said FULL STEAM AHEAD! Over the weekend. Netflix confirmed that The Crown Season 5 will start on November 9th, which was likely always going to be the premiere date. Netflix also dropped this teaser:

The first teaser for ‘THE CROWN’ Season 5 has been released.

The series releases on November 9 on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/vQrGU9pCRy

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) September 24, 2022

I can’t wait. People are so excited for this season! It’s the “war of the Waleses,” during John Major’s run as prime minister. It will apparently feature dramatizations of then-Prince Charles’s Jonathan Dimbleby interview and Diana’s Panorama interview. Ahead of the Season 4 premiere two years ago, Charles organized a completely unhinged PR campaign against Netflix and The Crown. “Sources close to Charles” cried for weeks and months about how The Crown got everything wrong. Well, now Charles is king. So he’s putting the full f–king weight of Buckingham Palace behind his campaign against The Crown now. From the Telegraph:

Buckingham Palace has moved to protect the reputation of the King as Netflix prepares to dramatise the “all out war” of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales in a new series of The Crown. The timing of its release could not have been worse for the King, whose popularity has surged since he became monarch, as it will remind viewers of the darkest years of his life, when he was the least popular member of the Royal family.

A senior royal source stressed on Sunday that The Crown is “a drama not a documentary” in the first sign of a push back against what will be uncomfortable viewing for the Palace.

Netflix decided not to delay the release of the fifth series, despite the death of Queen Elizabeth, whose “annus horribilis” in 1992 will be covered by the new episodes. It was the year in which Windsor Castle partly burnt down and both Prince Charles and Prince Andrew separated from their wives and the Princess Royal divorced Mark Phillips.

A spokesman for the streaming giant said the series had been completed before the Queen’s death and that no changes to it had been made.

A friend of the King described the drama as “exploitative” and said Netflix would have “no qualms about mangling people’s reputations”, even the late Queen’s. The source added: “What people forget is that there are real human beings and real lives at the heart of this.”

The King has never watched The Crown or passed comment on it, but the Queen Consort does watch it and made light of her own portrayal on screen by inviting Emerald Fennell, who plays her on screen, to an International Women’s Day reception at Clarence House earlier this year.

Royal aides believe the King and the Queen Consort will be better able to counter the portrayal of themselves in The Crown now that they have higher profile roles. Worldwide interest in the couple will be higher than it has been for decades after billions of people watched Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.

One well-placed source said: “You will see the King and the Queen Consort on state business in the UK and abroad and people will have more of an opportunity to compare the real people with the fiction they see in The Crown. In the past they didn’t get so much coverage, so in that sense it was harder for people to be able to compare and contrast the drama with the reality.”

[From The Telegraph]

As we said many times around Season 4, if ten hours of prestige streaming content can ruin a prince’s reputation, then perhaps Charles’s careful twenty-year rehabilitation isn’t as strong as he thinks. Season 4 – and the Windsors’ reaction to it – showed that support for Charles and Camilla is a mile wide and an inch deep. As soon as people remember or learn about all of the sh-t he did to Diana in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s game over. Honestly, Season 5 is going to be so much worse than Season 4 as well – I hope The Crown shows the depth of the public hatred for Charles, and the dawning realization (from his own mouth) that he married Diana as little more than a broodmare, because his father forced him to.

Photos courtesy of Netflix, Avalon Red.

A new study from Skidmore College assigned men and women to workout times of either the morning or the evening. While everyone got in better shape over the three month study, the women who worked out in the morning lost more abdominal fat than women who worked out in the evening. The men in the different workout time groups didn’t have any measurable differences. I read about this in People Magazine and found it really interesting. Here’s part of their writeup:

Working out in the morning instead of the night can help women lose more fat around their waist as well as improve their blood pressure, according to a new study published in May in Frontiers in Physiology.

Researchers tested for health, strength and fitness in men and women, splitting them into two groups. One group exercised four times a week in the morning, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m, and the other group worked out between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. There were 65 participants, and half were women.

According to the Washington Post, the research was designed to reflect real-world demographics, said Paul Arciero, the director of the Human Nutrition, Performance & Metabolism Laboratory at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and the study’s lead author.

The workouts were the same at both times of day and consisted of either lifting weights, interval training for 35 minutes, yoga or Pilates, or running or other aerobic exercise. The study lasted 12 weeks, and all volunteers came back in generally better shape regardless of when they worked out.

But there was a noticeable difference in women: Those who worked out in the morning saw their total body fat drop an average of 3 percent more than the evening exercisers. They also shed an average of 7 percent more abdominal fat, and their blood pressure lowered significantly more.

The women who worked out at night saw an increase in upper-body strength, nearly 7 percent more than the morning group.

“Based on our findings, women interested in reducing belly fat and blood pressure, while at the same time increasing leg muscle power should consider exercising in the morning. However, women interested in gaining upper body muscle strength, power and endurance, as well as improving overall mood state and food intake, evening exercise is the preferred choice,” Arciero shared in a release. “Conversely, evening exercise is ideal for men interested in improving heart and metabolic health, as well as emotional wellbeing.”

[From People]

Overall the difference doesn’t seem that dramatic and the important thing is that everyone benefitted from working out. Again, this is People’s writeup of The Washington Post’s interpretation of this study. WaPo did not mention any information about controlling for diet whatsoever. It’s also worth noting that everyone did the same type of workouts, they just rotated them. Plus they didn’t account for whether people typically woke up early or stayed up late.

I get so hungry when I work out at night and I typically eat junk after dinner like popcorn and ice cream. I would guess that women who work out later eat more at night. When I work out in the morning it helps me stay on track with my food for the rest of the day and it’s a reminder to eat healthy. It helps set the tone for the rest of the day. It’s hard to work out in the morning though! I typically am working at this job at that time. I’ve heard that working out in the early afternoon is best for your circadian rhythm, like between 1 to 4pm. As that linked article states though, whenever you’re most motivated to work out is the best time for you. I feel that way about the type of workouts you do too – it should be something you consistently enjoy and want to keep doing.

Photos credit: Victor Amenze and Anastase Maragos on Unsplash and Blue Bird on Pexels

Here’s Part 2 of our coverage of Valentine Low’s book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown. Judging from the first excerpt in the Times, the book probably should have been called Somebody Call the Waaaambulance: How Lazy, Incompetent British People Lost Their Collective Minds When A Black American Woman Expected Them To Work. There is story after story of the Duchess of Sussex telling people that their work isn’t good enough (when it’s clear that it wasn’t good enough), or Kensington Palace staffers completely f–king up tasks and being scared to tell Meghan that they f–ked it up. There’s also more bullsh-t about the g–damn tiara, as if we haven’t heard about that a million times. Once again, it’s perfectly clear that Angela Kelly took it upon herself to massively disrespect both Meghan and Harry, and then when Harry told Kelly off, Kelly ran to QEII to cry about it, then Kelly began a smear campaign about it. More highlights:

The Angela Kelly beef: Meghan then needed to make sure her hairdresser had an opportunity to rehearse with it before the day itself. Unfortunately, on the day her hairdresser, Serge Normant, was in town, Angela Kelly was not available, so neither was the tiara. In Harry’s view, this was Kelly being obstructive. According to the book Finding Freedom, Kelly had ignored repeated requests from Kensington Palace to set up a date for a hair trial. And Harry was furious. “Nothing could convince Harry that some of the old guard at the palace simply didn’t like Meghan and would stop at nothing to make her life difficult,” wrote the book’s authors. But there is another version: that Harry and Meghan were naive at best, entitled at worst, to expect others to jump to their command when they had not even bothered to make an appointment.

Angela Kelly is awful: Harry then began ringing others to put pressure on Kelly to bend the rules and in the course of his less than diplomatic efforts is said to have used some fairly fruity language. Whether Harry swore at his grandmother’s aide, or about her, is not clear. But she wasn’t impressed. She reported all this to the Queen, who summoned Harry to a private meeting. “He was firmly put in his place,” a source said. “He had been downright rude.”

Why did personal assistant Melissa Touabti leave? Palace sources have said that the clashes between Meghan and Touabti centred on the free gifts that some companies would send to Meghan. Deliveries were constantly arriving at Kensington Palace. “Clothes, jewellery, candles… It was absolutely nonstop,” said a source. Touabti was apparently punctilious in following the household rule that members of the royal family cannot accept freebies from commercial organisations. Her approach did not go down well with Meghan.

They’re desperate to make the South Pacific tour sound bad: Although she enjoyed the attention, Meghan failed to understand the point of all those walkabouts, shaking hands with countless strangers. According to several members of staff, she was heard to say on at least one occasion, “I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this.”

Finally, their own office: The palace wanted to set them up with an office within Buckingham Palace. Harry and Meghan wanted their own arrangement, probably at Windsor Castle, near their new home of Frogmore Cottage. If they were stuck in Buckingham Palace, subservient to the whole palace machine, they would be no better than other lesser royals such as the Duke of York or the Earl and Countess of Wessex. But there was no way that the palace would fund the establishment of a separate satellite operation. It was a decision by the Queen and the Prince of Wales, both of whom were keenly aware of the need to avoid unnecessary extravagance.

Things fall apart in 2019: By August 2019, things were “awful and tense” within the Sussex household. There were also clues that Harry and Meghan did not see their long-term future as working members of the royal family. Their Africa tour was coming up, but there was nothing in the diary after that. Meanwhile, staff were increasingly aware of the presence in the background of Meghan’s business manager, Andrew Meyer, and her lawyer, Rick Genow, as well as her agent, Nick Collins, and Keleigh Thomas Morgan of Sunshine Sachs. The US team had been very busy, working on deals not only with Netflix but also a deal for Harry’s mental health series for Apple+ with Oprah Winfrey and Meghan’s voiceover for a Disney film about elephants.

The ITV documentary from their African tour: The trailer came out while William and Kate were on a tour of Pakistan. The resulting coverage inevitably overshadowed reporting of the last day of the Cambridges’ tour. The Cambridge team was not happy and saw it as a deliberate attempt to knock the Cambridges out of the headlines. Relations between the two households became quite tense.

Leaky Peg: William, back home after the Pakistan tour, appears to have been taken aback at such a stark portrayal of his brother and sister-in-law’s unhappiness. He realised they were in crisis. The day after the documentary aired, William whatsapped his brother to ask if he could come and see him. This put Harry and Meghan into a spin. What should they do? Initially, Harry was in favour. Then he spoke to his brother again and asked him who he would tell. William explained that he would have to clear his schedule, which would mean telling his private secretary. At that point, Harry said don’t come. He was so concerned that William’s team would leak the visit to the press that he would rather they did not come than risk it getting into the papers. It highlighted once again the dysfunction at the heart of so many royal relationships and that members of the royal family so rarely pick up the phone and speak to each other directly.

[From The Times]

The “royals can’t accept freebies” rule was only enforced for Meghan, by the way. Kate accepts freebies constantly and she also accepts deep discounts. Charles has a long history of accepting literal suitcases full of cash and, as Prince of Wales, he was up to his neck in all kinds of shady loans and financial shenanigans, which are a lot worse than “Meghan wanted to keep some candles she was sent.” Besides, I think it’s pretty clear that every staffer within KP was compromised – they all lost the plot at having to deal with someone organized and hardworking.

The part about Meghan’s LA people being in the background in 2019 is… interesting but there’s a heavy dash of bullsh-t. Harry and Meghan were exploring other options that year, and Harry was already working on the AppleTV series, The Me You Can’t See. But I do believe Meghan was in contact with her LA people that year, because… she knew that they would need a plan for what was next, because it was clear that they would leave. What’s curious to me is how did KP staff know that Meghan was in contact with her old entertainment lawyer? At that point, the Sussexes were out of KP. Was KP monitoring her phone calls?

One of the strangest things about Low’s book, from what I can see of it thus far, is that Low pretends that Meghan’s behavior towards KP staff exists in a vacuum. In the same time frame as many of these “incidents,” KP staffers briefed the media against the Sussexes, proudly sharing their nicknames for Meghan, like “Me-Gain” and “Degree Wife.” All the royal courts were not hiding the fact that they were smearing her on a daily basis, while they all knew she was heavily pregnant AND suicidal. There was also the Middleton Manor operation, in which Meghan was used as a foil for perfect Kate. On top of all that, we also know that William was actively briefing against Meghan and Harry to hide his own rose-bush trimming. Instead of Low actually showing journalistic initiative and pursuing those avenues, he’s little more than a stenographer for the courtiers.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

I’ve been watching House of the Dragon and am four episodes in so far. (There are no major spoilers in this post, but there are some minor ones.) I can’t stop watching it, but I don’t care about anyone. I wouldn’t mind if any of the main characters died violent deaths. Everyone is despicable in their own way, and I only feel sorry for the hapless characters who are introduced just to die in the same episode. Two major characters are being replaced by other actors as the show jumps ten years from episode four to five. Rhaenyra, first played by Milly Alcock, gets replaced by Emma D’Arcy and Queen Alicent, Emily Carey, is now Olivia Cooke. I know Cooke from one of my favorite underrated shows, Bates Motel. I’ve also seen her in The Sound of Metal, Thoroughbreds (RIP Anton Yelchin) and Ready Player One. Honestly I had no idea that she was British until I saw her interview with Jimmy Kimmel recently. Cooke told Kimmel that she was hung over terribly her first day on set after partying with Alan Carr, and that she didn’t want to replace Emily Carey since she’s talented.

On coming in to House of the Dragon a few episodes in
Emily Carey, who’s an amazing actor, I wish she was a bit more rubbish at her job. So then I could go in and be like ‘don’t worry guys I’ve got this.’ But no everyone is going to be devastated. She did know she was going to be replaced.

On getting blackout drunk the night before her first day on set
Alan Carr… invited me to be on [his] podcast and I was very excited and my call time the next day was until 11. So I brought a bottle of wine just as a gesture and the podcast finished… he’s telling me loads of gossip but I’m like ‘more wine’. I don’t remember getting home. I remember I tipped my head down to put my hair in a pony [and] fell over. Then I woke up the next day and I had a chip in my tooth. No one knew on set until now.

[From Jimmy Kimmel Live on YouTube]

Getting blackout drunk and forgetting how you got home and chipped a tooth isn’t the best story to tell on a talk show. Cooke is an excellent actress though and I will watch her on House of the Dragon. It’s not a hate watch exactly because it’s an entertaining show and I’m not mad at the writing as much as I dislike everyone on it. I think a hate watch means the show is terrible, right? I do feel robbed somewhat of Alicent and Rhaenyra, but that’s the nature of this show. I’m sure I’ll adjust to the new actresses within a few minutes once I watch this.

As for the new actresses, Emily Carey told the Official Game of Thrones HBO Podcast that she and Milly Alcock were advised not to talk to the women playing the older versions of their characters “because it is like we’re literally playing completely different people. 10 years is a really long time, you know?” Emily is 19! Ten years is a long time at 19 but when you’re ten years older than that it feels like it goes by in a blip. I’m not a completely different person than I was even 20 years ago, everyone evolves but I’m still at my core the same.

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I just scrolled through two years of Robin Wright’s Instagram and holy crap, she’s a fun Instagrammer. She’s got some side-businesses – sleepwear?? – and she loves to promote her projects. She’s got tons of family photos on her ‘gram too, and plenty of cute pics of her two children, both of whom are adults now. The whole reason why I had to go through two years’ worth of photos is that 2020 was the last time she posted anything about her husband Clement Giraudet. Robin married Clement in August 2018 after dating for more than a year. It felt like they might be making a home for themselves in both California and France, and then in 2020, it felt like no, they were just California-based. During the early months of the pandemic, they were pap’d several times, riding bikes and looking loved up. Then something shifted during the pandemic. Suddenly, no more pap photos. Clement hasn’t been seen on her IG in two years. And now this: she’s filed for divorce.

Robin Wright and Clément Giraudet are reportedly going their separate ways. The House of Cards actress, 56, has filed for divorce from the Yves Saint Laurent executive, 37, according to TMZ. Citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split, Wright listed the date of the pair’s separation as July 31, the outlet said.

Wright said in her divorce filing, per TMZ, that “all assets are his/her separate property” based on the “parties’ post-nuptial agreement.” The actress also checked a box to block the court’s ability to award spousal support to either of them, the outlet added.

A representative for Wright did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Wright and Giraudet then tied the knot in August 2018 in a “very intimate and low-key” wedding, a source told PEOPLE at the time.

“Robin wanted it to be about them, not a big production,” the source added.

Wright was previously married to Sean Penn from 1996 to 2010. The actors share son Hopper, 29, and daughter Dylan, 31. Wright was also married to Dane Witherspoon from 1986 to 1988, and engaged to Ben Foster, though they called off their romance in August 2015.

[From People]

Robin’s whole vibe post-Sean Penn is FUN. She raised her children, got rid of the ham-faced dead weight and she’s been living her best life at the beach. She has tons of friends, she still works, she’s close to both of her kids. It could be that she didn’t feel like compromising anything with Clement, like, why should she have to change? Maybe the age difference was a factor, but come on, Robin is still crazy-hot. If anything, she probably dumped Clement for a hotter, younger and more virile man.

Photos courtesy of Instagram, Avalon Red, Backgrid.

Twenty-four hours before Queen Elizabeth II passed away, Omid Scobie’s weekly Yahoo UK column went up and it’s worth re-reading. It was all about Prince William and Prince Harry’s strained relationship and how neither of them is ready to bury any hatchet. Unlike the talking points issued straight from Middleton Manor and Kensington Palace, Scobie pointed out the thing that no other royal reporter ever likes to admit, which is that William did a lot of sh-t to Harry and Meghan behind-the-scenes, and Harry has good reason to not reconcile with William. Scobie quoted a family friend who said, “What [Harry] is waiting for is accountability… Many lines were crossed by William. He was at the centre of a number of painful moments, be it the actions of his own staff or turning his back when support was needed. It was a dark time and one that, so far, William has been unprepared to unpack.” Scobie also noted that William expects/demands an apology from Harry because Harry dared to speak about just a fraction of the sh-t he went through.

I bring this up because Katie Nicholl is currently promoting her latest book, The New Royals. It was excerpted in Vanity Fair, where sources lamented the idea that Harry and Meghan’s departure from the UK has been hard “particularly for William, whose young family has been thrust into the spotlight prematurely. He always expected Harry would be his wingman; there was a long-term plan in place for the brothers to work together and support one another.” Because everyone knows that William is incompetent and awful, “plans were in place” to ensure that William could hide behind his more charismatic workhorse brother indefinitely. William’s ass still hurts that Harry refused to stick around to be abused and bullied. Well, Nicholl had more to say in a new interview:

Prince William ‘simply can’t forgive’ Prince Harry for the way he has behaved – and ‘always thought his brother would be his wingman’, a royal expert has claimed.

Katie Nicholl, author of The New Royals – Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy and the Future of the Crown, claimed the new Prince of Wales, 40, is unlikely to let bygones be bygones – despite putting on a united front with the Duke of Sussex, 38, during a walkabout in Windsor following the Queen’s death.

Speaking on Dan Wootton Tonight, Ms Nicholl said: ‘William simply can’t forgive [Harry], not just for his behaviour and what he’s done and how he’s done it, but look at how much now rests on William. He always thought Harry would be his wingman, now he’s doing it on his own. Thank goodness he’s got Kate by his side,’ added the author.

[From The Daily Mail]

Just in case anyone needed it underlined and head-bashed, Nicholl’s sources are almost entirely from Kensington Palace and Middleton Manor. And even she can’t sugarcoat it – a 40-year-old man is incandescent with rage because his younger brother refused to hang around indefinitely and “help” him. There have always been theories that William is jealous of Harry, jealous of Harry’s happy, loving marriage, jealous of Harry’s popularity and charisma, jealous of Harry’s ideas and work ethic. But I also think William is jealous of Meghan because she “got” Harry. Harry was supposed to be William’s toy. Anyway, just a reminder that for all of this talk that William “can’t forgive” Harry, Harry still wants accountability from William for all of the sh-t William did to him.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

The promotion for Don’t Worry Darling was chaotic, but you can’t deny that there was word-of-mouth “buzz” for the film. Was most of the buzz about the behind-the-scenes drama? Yes. But that’s worked for other films too. It does look like all of the dramas between Olivia Wilde, Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and Chris Pine created enough interest to ensure that people came out for DWD’s opening weekend. Box office prognosticators were at their wit’s end trying to figure out what the up-and-down tracking meant, which led to a curious piece on Vulture. Vulture spoke to those industry insiders, executives and prognosticators to figure out what could be learned from the Please Worry Darling promotional debacle, and unnamed sources actually spilled some tea about the on-set tensions between Olivia and Miss Flo herself.

An anonymous executive from a rival studio called early estimates of DWD’s opening-weekend box-office performance “schizophrenic,” and an exec at yet another studio called it “all over the place.”

“I’ve never seen tracking go up and down so much,” said the latter exec. “They went up three points of interest, lost five points of interest. Now they’re, like, nowhere. They’ve got young girls excited because of Harry Styles, and that’s it. Their campaign keeps changing: ‘It’s a thriller!’ No, just kidding. ‘It’s a romantic drama!’ ‘It’s this. It’s that!’ Kim Kardashian liked it on Instagram. The audience is like, What the f–k is going on?”

In one alarming indication of ebbing interest for Don’t Worry Darling, ticket presales have leveled off this week rather than spiking upward as is more typical of a film about to make its multiplex debut, according to tracking data. By contrast, Paramount’s supernatural-horror title Smile — which opens a full week later on September 30 — just pulled ahead of Don’t Worry Darling with a score of 13 in the crucial box-office tracking metric of “unaided awareness” versus DWD’s 12, according to a Thursday report from NRG. Not helping matters: Chris Pine’s “last-minute” cancellation of a promotional appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this week. (He joined Pugh in skipping DWD’s New York premiere.)

Pugh’s refusal to do more than the barest minimum of media appearances in support of the film has been parsed as confirmation of her animus toward Wilde… and rumors about the true depths of DWD dysfunction have seemingly picked up the promotional slack. According to an anonymous source who spent significant time on the DWD set and spoke to Vulture last week, a blowout argument between star and director did indeed take place in January 2021 — about three-quarters of the way through filming. Pugh, who is a few degrees removed from Wilde’s ex, Jason Sudeikis, had reportedly grown fed up with the director’s frequent unexplained absences. “Olivia and Harry would just disappear,” the source says. But the breaking point came when Pugh, 26, and Wilde, 38, broke into a “screaming match,” this person recalls.

According to our source, the acrimony between Wilde and Pugh allegedly reached all the way to the top of the studio totem pole, with the highest-ranking Warner Bros. executive at the time, Toby Emmerich, forced to play referee in a “long negotiation process” to ensure Pugh would participate in the film’s life cycle “in any way” and not jeopardize the potential box office. (A Warner Bros. spokeswoman said Emmerich was traveling and unavailable to comment. Vulture also reached out for comment to representatives for Wilde and Pugh, who did not respond.)

An anonymous executive with knowledge of the situation told us that top Warner Bros. brass are ultimately unhappy with how Wilde has handled DWD promotional duties — specifically with regard to how she’s discussed LaBeouf’s departure from the film in interviews. (Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) “Olivia is either a mad genius who figured out a way to make people more aware of the movie in a way that just drives up the box office,” says another source close to the production, “or she doesn’t have any self-awareness that she is f–king up her movie.”

[From Vulture]

This is actually not the first time we’ve heard about a “blowout argument” between Florence and Olivia, nor is it the first time we’ve heard that Florence was upset with Olivia’s unexplained absences, when she was off with Harry. That gossip has been layered into tabloid reporting before now, so it’s interesting to see Vulture’s industry sources backing up those stories. Now, I hadn’t heard about Toby Emmerich coming in to mediate the conflict, but I think it’s worth pointing out that no one from the studio seemed the least bit surprised that Florence refused to do promotion and that she didn’t even do the press conference in Venice. Florence has clearly been backed by Warner Bros for months and the WB has been kept in the loop about Pugh’s issues with Wilde (which is smart for Pugh – go above Olivia’s head, deal with the issues at an executive level). This Vulture piece also confirms something I’ve been half-way assuming this whole time: the studio isn’t happy with Olivia and this whole DWD drama has done serious and lasting damage to Olivia’s career, regardless of the film’s box office.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

Zawe Ashton covers the October issue of Tatler to promote Mr Malcolm’s List, which is a period romantic-comedy in the vein of Jane Austen or Bridgerton, I guess. Freida Pinto is the lead, but Zawe has a significant role. Zawe is also engaged to Tom Hiddleston and pregnant with their first child. She speaks of that and she speaks around it with Tatler – she has clear lines she doesn’t really want to cross, but she does mention Tom and she’s clearly very pregnant. I’ve always sort of thought that Zawe’s energy is very calm, focused and driven, but I never realized (before now) that she’s actually kind of similar to Hiddles – she’s chatty, upbeat, a bit dorky and “keen.” You can feel her bristling against the hurdles and roadblocks set in her path since birth but she doesn’t come right and say “god, Britain is a terrible place to be a Black woman.” Some highlights from Tatler:

Whether she gets a lot of villain roles: ‘I think that’s probably a phase I’ve always been in – certainly the outsider phase. I’ve always played outliers, and that’s great. I think it’s where you can move the needle the most.’

Summers in Uganda. ‘There’s a lot of strength in having a duality. We’re finally seeing that more and more now as something to be celebrated. When I was younger, that wasn’t the case.’

Bullied in school & at drama school: ‘It was rough. They break you down.’ Why? ‘I think they saw my keenness, my enthusiasm… I don’t know why, but sometimes they really want to wash you out.’

She pitched a show like ‘Girls’ which was in development hell: ‘There was just this weird resistance. And bullying. Bullying, demeaning, gaslighting… I was yelled at by one producer because I was questioning something about my own work.’ I venture cautiously that, to some, Ashton might just have been too much of a multi-hyphenate. ‘Yep. We didn’t do that kind of thing here until the success of things like I May Destroy You or Fleabag.’

She supports other artists: ‘We don’t fuel the fire of genuine enthusiasm in the UK. It’s like, “Don’t get ideas above; stay calm; it’s not that good.” I appreciate that, because I’m London through and through – I love that acerbic quality and I love that edge. But it can be really damaging.’

Working with Tom Hiddleston on ‘Betrayal’: ‘Tom and I had done a reading together of the central scene, at a gala for Harold Pinter’s birthday’.

Pregnant with Tom’s baby: ‘Thanks, it’s wonderful.’ I’d read somewhere that she’d always wanted children. ‘I know… I used to talk about it all the time in interviews – it was really unsuitable.’ Has she learnt the art of discretion now? ‘I’ve got to learn it.’

Pregnant at 38: ‘You’re told, “Don’t get pregnant” but also “Don’t leave it too long” because then you’re going to be an old maid. I’ve been prehistoric in this industry since I was 25. The mixed messaging is rough and has to be addressed.’ She hadn’t felt stressed by her biological clock ticking: ‘It was just suddenly this self-permission comes over you that goes against all that messaging.’

Announcing the pregnancy by showing up with her bump: ‘I don’t want to talk about my personal life. I didn’t feel like I had to do anything… it felt like [the pregnancy news] happened in the right way. [It is a] really, really, vital moment where we’re talking about women and their autonomy when it comes to their bodies.’ The Roe v Wade reversal had been announced just days before, and she had no desire to ‘be cute’ about it. ‘I’m not into “announcements” or “reveals”. I’m into trying to carry the narrative as much as possible myself, rather than anyone else feeling like they have an exclusive on my body.’

Doors are opening for young actors of color: ‘I can see that opportunities for so many under-represented students are suddenly there. I don’t worry about them the way I worried for myself – and that’s really lovely. Systemic racism isn’t going anywhere fast. But they can imagine themselves in huge franchises, in the new Netflix show, in the lead in West End theatres.’

She loves Jane Austen’s books but not P&P: ‘I’m not really a Pride and Prejudice girl’, she frowns. Not into Darcy? ‘No, too austere. People love that. I know friends who are like, “I love how emotionally unavailable you are.” I’m like, “Oh gawd!”’

[From Tatler]

“We don’t fuel the fire of genuine enthusiasm in the UK. It’s like, ‘Don’t get ideas above; stay calm; it’s not that good’.” As in, don’t get ideas above your station, Britain is still racist and classist and enthusiasm is always suspicious. Tatler has a thing about mentioning the Duchess of Sussex in random interviews but they didn’t in this one. Perhaps because it was too “on the nose.” Because the whole piece felt like one big subweet of Meghan’s experience and culture shock.

And yes, the fact that she’s not into Mr. Darcy makes so much sense. Hiddles isn’t brooding or austere, he’s a big, energetic puppy. Of course, her favorite Austen books are Persuasion and Emma.

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Cover & IG courtesy of Tatler.