Billie Eilish covers the March issue of Vanity Fair, mostly to promote her new AppleTV documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. She allowed cameras to follow her around from 2018 into early 2020, which seems like a long time, and like they probably have enough footage for ten documentaries. Which I’m sure Billie’s legion of fans would love and watch constantly. Personally, I’m too old to be a Billie Eilish stan, but I’ve enjoyed her growth and her maturing as I’ve covered her interviews in recent years. She went through a painfully self-aware stage where she was constantly making her relatively charmed life sound completely miserable, but she got into therapy and simply grew up, so she comes across so much better these days. You can read the full VF piece here. Some highlights:

She loved the documentary cameras: “I just have always loved cameras, and I loved being on camera, and I’ve always loved watching videos of myself, since I was a little kid. I remember being 10 and being like, ‘Mom, can I watch home movies?’ ”

The devotion from her young female fans: “[It] makes you kind of crazy. We all know the feeling of seeing yourself and being like, What is going on with me, I’m acting insane. When you’re excited about something, you forget boundaries and you forget what’s polite and what’s kind of not polite. I’ve had a lot of weird situations—people will kiss me and pick me up, spin me around.” For meet-and-greets, back when those were still happening, members of her team started briefing the kids in line about how to behave. “It is definitely important to have the boundaries and also have people around you that can help in a situation like that. I never want to push away somebody that’s showing me only love. And even if it’s coming from a place of crazy love, I don’t ever want to push that too far away.”

She’s sober & she promotes sobriety: “When I was growing up and I was around my group of friends back then, and they would all be drinking and smoking and doing drugs and whatever, I think because of the way that my personality is—I’m a very strong-willed person, and I think at the time I was very alpha—I’m coming to realize that I may have felt a feeling of superiority. I’m not out here going to parties and also, I’m me, so I can’t really go…anywhere.”

The photos of Billie in a tank top which went viral: “I think that the people around me were more worried about it than I was, because the reason I used to cut myself was because of my body. To be quite honest with you, I only started wearing baggy clothes because of my body. I was really, really glad though, mainly, that I’m in this place in my life, because if that had happened three years ago, when I was in the midst of my horrible body relationship—or dancing a ton, five years ago, I wasn’t really eating. I was, like, starving myself. I remember taking a pill that told me that it would make me lose weight and it only made me pee the bed—when I was 12. It’s just crazy. I can’t even believe, like I—wow. Yeah. I thought that I would be the only one dealing with my hatred for my body, but I guess the internet also hates my body. So that’s great.” I posit that the internet might hate all women’s bodies. “The internet hates women.”

Shopping online during the pandemic: “I don’t know what things cost because I’ve never been an adult before. And, you know, I grew up with no money. It’s a really weird position I’m in. I feel kind of stupid because I’m like, I don’t know how much Froot Loops are. I tried to order one box of Froot Loops and I was like, Oh yeah, sure. It’s $35. I didn’t know that that’s expensive. I ordered 70 boxes.”

Why she got politically active in 2020: “I think it’s human to care, and I just don’t really get why people don’t care. I want to have kids and I want those kids to have kids. Like, I don’t— We’re going to die.”

Her vocal support of the Biden-Harris ticket: The outgoing Trump administration highlighted her name in a document as an artist who should not be used in a coronavirus ad campaign. “I was very proud of myself. Tons of my friends texted me and they were like, I’m so proud of you! Trump is afraid of you! I was like, Damn right.”

What she did when the election was called for Biden: “[I] immediately started howling and cheering at eight in the morning. And so did the rest of the neighborhood.” She grabbed some leftover fireworks from the Fourth of July and “I lit the bitches.” (There was an Instagram story of her doing so.) “There’s still a million things we need to do better, but just getting that orange piece of sh-t out of that White House is the best thing that could happen right now.”

Whether she’s dating anyone: “Girl, no. I am glad every day that I’m single, but I’m also like, not out here pushing people away. I’d be fine to have somebody, but I don’t.”

[From Vanity Fair]

Wait, what kind of Fruit Loops is she ordering and where? Billie, comparison shop for Fruit Loops!! Honestly, that was the one section of the interview which made me kind of sad? Reading her interviews over the years, it’s clear that her parents – who home-schooled her – never really prepared her to live by herself or take care of herself. I get that she’s very close to her parents, and if she was living by herself right now, we would worry about her in that situation too. But I hope her folks have spent the pandemic year teaching her some, like, basics about cooking, cleaning, bill-paying, how much things cost.

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Cover & IG courtesy of Vanity Fair.

At the end of the previous post about Jennifer Aniston and the interminable speculation and Gossip Genie-ing for her to get back together with Brad Pitt, I said that gossip needs more super-couples. New super-couples. Well, here’s one: Michael B Jordan and Lori Harvey. When it was Lori’s birthday l…

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This is just a heartwarming story that confirms my love of Pedro Pascal (before he was in Wonder Woman, but that wasn’t his fault). Pedro, 45, has always been a decent person and we’ve barely covered him for that reason. You don’t hear a bad word about the guy, he’s not a shameless self promoter, he doesn’t say obnoxious things or date instamodels (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and for that reason we don’t talk about him much. Pedro’s sister, Lux, 28, is a transgender woman and is featured on the cover of a Spanish language magazine called Ya. Lux told Ya that Pedro was so supportive and helpful to her as she transitioned. Pedro has also posted in support of Lux, calling her his corazon/heart. This is so nice!

The Mandalorian star posted a photo of Lux’s cover for the Spanish-language Ya magazine, where she opened up about her transition for the first time. In the caption, Pascal, 45, gave all his love to Lux, 28.

“Mi hermana, mi corazón, nuestra Lux,” Pascal wrote in his native Spanish, which translates to, “my sister, my heart, our Lux.”

Lux revealed in the interview that she started receiving hormone treatment in July. She’s now studying acting at the famed Juilliard School in New York City.

“My transition has been something that’s very natural for everyone in my family,” Lux said in the feature, translated from her native Spanish. “It’s almost something that they expected to happen.”

As for her famous brother, Lux said Pascal “has been an important part of this. He’s also an artist and has served as a guide for me. He was one of the first people to gift me the tools that started shaping my identity.”

When she came out to him as trans over FaceTime, she said he “asked me how I felt, because I remember he was a little worried.” After Lux said she was happy, the actor quickly congratulated her.

“Perfect, this is incredible,” Lux recalled Pascal saying to her.

[From People]

I wish all transgender people could get this kind of support from their families. I’ve read some really heart wrenching stories on Twitter about people’s families rejecting them when they come out. For those people, I hope they can build their own families to support them, you know? That’s one of the things I like about Twitter, that trans people are supported and loved by the community there. I love hearing stories like this. It’s rare that we hear about a celebrity being so kind and encouraging behind the scenes to his family, along with so publicly supportive. I have always liked Pedro Pascal and this just confirms that.

Lux Pascal opens up about her brother Pedro’s reaction to her coming out as a transgender woman: “Pedro is an important part of this. He was the first person to gift me the tools that started shaping my identity. [When I came out to him, he said] ‘Perfect, this is incredible!’” pic.twitter.com/6NJ9xO1FCG

— Film Updates (@TheFilmUpdates) February 9, 2021

Also how handsome is he?!

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Halle Berry has done a ton of work in recent years to rehabilitate her image after a nasty, years-long custodial and financial dispute with her ex, Gabriel Aubry. It’s still kind of wild to see Halle carrying on like normal, like nothing ever happened and everyone on her timeline yelling “you go girl” at everything she says and does. It’s bizarre, because in 2012-14, all kinds of accusations were being thrown around like it was just another day. Even back in 2015, Halle was still instigating beefs with Aubry over the court-mandated (and repeatedly reaffirmed) child support payments Halle had to make to Aubry. She just couldn’t get over the fact that she had to pay child support to her ex, and she did everything she could to halt payments, to be a deadbeat, and to even yank the joint custody away from Aubry.

I guess people either forgot about all of that messiness or they just want to forget it. By the end of that years-long debacle, Halle had thrown so much mud, I’m sure people still think Gabriel did something wrong and that Halle was somehow the wronged party, always and forever, because that’s how she always leaves relationships. Anyway, Halle is getting attention this week because she seemingly made a reference to all of this.

Halle Berry is firing back at online trolls who targeted her and her love life. The 54-year-old Oscar winner shared a quote on Instagram Saturday that read, “Women don’t owe you s—,” which received plenty of love from fellow A-listers such as Chrissy Teigen, Vivica A. Fox and Tia Mowry.

One online troll caught Berry’s attention when they commented, “With all of your accomplishments, fame, beauty, it seems, as if, you CAN’T keep a man,” to which Berry replied with, “Who said I wanted to keep them? I’m all about living your best life, if you make a wrong move, course correct and re-spin and start again!”

Another commenter wrote, “Says the women who can’t keep a man.” Berry responded with, “Who says I wanna keep the wrong man? cuz…..I don’t.”

[From People]

First of all, the Instagram post… it’s funny because the family court judge had to order Halle to pay child support like a million different times, because Halle DID owe a man some sh-t. So I feel like that was a pointed IG. But in general, yes, of course, women don’t owe men sh-t. And “keeping a man” is such a stupid concept and most men are objectively terrible and all of that. That being said… I still wonder why things went so dead-quiet between Halle and Olivier Martinez. And I do wonder if Halle has just tried to not be so toxic in relationships now or something. Maybe.

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Here are Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in LA working on the second season of The Morning Show. Jen was seen in a grey suit for one scene and a camel coat for another – very Alex Levy. Both at one point are wearing face shields. Have we talked about the fact that Julianna Margulies is joinin…

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think any on-screen portrayal of Princess Diana had ever worked before Emma Corrin nailed it in The Crown’s Season 4. Diana was just so particular to the era, her voice was so distinctive, and her journey was so well-known. How do you play someone larger than life? Emma and Peter Morgan figured it out, using Diana’s journey as part historical canon and part soap opera, aiming to get the broad strokes correct rather than holding themselves to complete historical accuracy. And now other projects are trying to figure out how to do their own spin on “Diana” as a historical character, trying to get the broad strokes right while sacrificing some historical accuracy. Such is the case of Spencer, the movie which is being filmed right now, with Kristen Stewart starring as Diana. Spencer will show Diana at Sandringham one weekend, deciding to end her marriage. But just like the drama over The Crown, royal reporters are already trying to nitpick the accuracy, and make it sound like the Windors are not happy.

The royal family will ‘not like’ the upcoming Princess Diana’s upcoming biopic starring Kristen Stewart, an expert has claimed. Robert Jobson, a royal biographer who knew the late Princess’ ‘well’ said that it was ‘inevitable’ The Firm won’t enjoy the picture ‘at all’.

The film, directed by Pablo Larraín and written by Steven Knight, will focus on a ‘pivotal’ weekend at Sandringham and also stars Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins and Sean Harris.

‘I knew her as a person, it’s inevitable that the royals won’t like the biopic at all,’ Jobson, who has written multiple books about the royal, told Us Weekly. ‘They won’t like it, but they would have expected it. It is the truth, I think the most important thing is how well the actress can interpret the role. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Jobson added that the photographs of Stewart looked ‘remarkably like Diana’ and ‘uncanny’.

‘I think what’s more important is the authenticity of the portrayal, and we’ll have to see how that develops because my understanding is it’s going to be a good script and it’s going to be a good premise, but it might not necessarily have actually happened in the way they’re saying,’ he continued.

It comes as new accuracy row has broken out over the upcoming film with royal experts branding it inaccurate because it’s set on a weekend at Sandringham which never happened. According to Jobson and fellow biographer Ingrid Seward, Diana had stopped visiting the estate before the period in which the drama is set. Robert added that Diana had already made the decision regarding her marriage ‘years before’, while Ingrid pointed out that the princess ‘never wanted a divorce’.

[From The Daily Mail]

Yep. As I said when the film and plot was announced, that circa 1990-91, Diana and Charles were living separate lives and she didn’t just pop down to Sandringham for the weekend unless it was some kind of massively special occasion where she and Charles would have to put in an appearance together. Charles and Diana really separated their lives by the late 1980s, with Diana staying in Kensington Palace and Charles mostly staying at Highgrove, to be closer to Camilla. That being said, I do wonder if the broad strokes will still be correct, because at this point, Charles and Diana’s marriage was so toxic. Will they show that?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.

All I know about Justin Hartley is that he treated Chrishell Stause like crap and blindsided her with divorce papers. She’s an a-hole too, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. He has daughter Isabella, 16, from his first marriage, to his passions co-star Lindsay Korman. Hartley is teaching Isabella how to drive and it is not going well. He told Seth Meyers on his show that he thinks Isabella is trying to kill him for a couple of reasons. She’s running red lights and then locking him out of the house in the middle of the night. It sounds like things are tense for them in quarantine.

His daughter is a reckless driver
There’s nothing more terrifying than taking your daughter or son who knows nothing about driving and putting them behind the wheel. It’s the worst thing in the world. There’s got to be a better way to do this.

The other day I take her out and I’m doing the father-daughter thing.. We fill up the tank and I’m getting comfortable. And I go into the gas station and I have a sweet tooth so I just stock up on gummy bears.

I’m in the car and she’s driving and I open up the gummy bears and I’m eating them, shoving them in my mouth like a child. I look up and we are cruising through a four way – a red light. Reckless, she could not have cared less. We pulled the car over. She realized what she did and I looked at her and said ‘That could have been my last gummy bear. You have to be more careful.’

His daughter locked him and his girlfriend out of the house at 3am after they went swimming
Here I am at 3am knocking on my daughter’s window. She answers the front door. She looks at me and goes ‘why are you still here?’ I was replaying the events of the car, locking me out in the rain. My daughter is trying to kill me. I’m with this person who is very dangerous.

On lockdown
What’s strange is how quickly you get used to the new normal. Everybody is in a mask, it’s not safe to be around people. I’ve been home since March, haven’t gone anywhere except for work and my daughter tries to kill me in the car. That’s the creepy part is you start to get used to it. I don’t know how to talk to people anymore.

[From Late Night on YouTube via People]

Justin was kind of nervous in this interview and I found it endearing. I also like what he said about how he doesn’t know how to talk to people anymore and that this is the new normal. I couldn’t relate to his story about teaching his daughter to drive. I too live with a 16-year-old and am teaching him how to drive. Although the driving part can be stressful he’s not running red lights and then blowing it off like it’s no big deal! He really tries, he just doesn’t know small things that I take for granted about driving, like not to hesitate at key moments. We have only gone on the highway once though. That wasn’t the most pleasant experience. I would be so stressed out if we were driving on the highway regularly. That reminds me that we really need to do that this weekend. Maybe I’ll buy some Jelly Bellies for that ride. Gummy Bears are not my favorite, but I completely understand Justin eating them in handfuls when he’s in the passenger seat with his teenager at the wheel. Also, are teenage girls super ruthless or what? I know I was.

Here’s that interview!

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There was a fire in La Peche, Quebec on the weekend. At the time, there were four people inside the home – the two adults survived, but the two children, Kiersten and Brooklyn, age 6 and 4, were killed. Their mother, Ashley, is in hospital, unconscious, and family members have not been able to visit…

For the past week or so, there’s been a lot of weird, dumb and/or infuriating news about Ivanka Trump. One of those stories? Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington running the numbers on some recently-released financial disclosures from Javanka. CREW came to the conclusion that Jared Kushner and Ivanka likely made something like half a billion dollars while both were “serving” in the White House.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to tell the exact amount as the income is sometimes reported in broad ranges and cover four months of income before Ivanka Trump officially joined her father’s administration and nearly one month before Jared Kushner joined.

Both Kushner and Trump announced they would not take a salary while working for the government in an attempt to shut down nepotism concerns. While their supporters marked this as a public sacrifice, the massive amount of money they made on the side undercuts that argument, as government salaries would have been less than 1% of their income.

One major factor in their outside profits came from Ivanka Trump’s ownership stake in the Trump Hotel in DC, just blocks from the White House and the locus of influence peddling in the Trump administration. Before business slowed down due to the pandemic, the couple paid a combined 23 visits to the hotel. All told, Ivanka made more than $13 million from the hotel since 2017, dropping from about $4 million a year between 2017 and 2019 to about $1.5 million last year, at least in part due to the pandemic. On top of the drop in revenue, there’s an unexplained drop in the value of her ownership. Having previously claimed it to be worth between $5 million and $25 million, in her final disclosure she listed it as only worth $100,000 to $250,000. She did not report selling any of her ownership share in the hotel.

The hotel was far from Ivanka Trump’s only controversial source of income while working in the White House. In 2018, Ivanka announced she was shutting down her namesake brand, and she later filed a disclosure with the government that “[a]ll operations of the business ceased on July 31, 2018.” But we discovered that she still made up to $1 million from it in 2019 despite the fact that she claimed it no longer existed.

While after four years it’s still a little hard to tell what, exactly, Ivanka actually did in the White House, her tenure was still marked by repeated scandals revolving around potential conflicts of interest with her businesses. While dealing with foreign governments can raise obvious questions for the children of presidents, getting financial or other benefits from foreign governments while working as a senior staffer in your father’s administration should be an obvious non-starter. But when it comes to Ivanka’s time in the administration, getting foreign trademarks to use after leaving the White House may have been her biggest accomplishment.

[From CREW]

Yeah. I know it’s kind of confusing but we’ve known for a while that if this family is to be prosecuted for anything, their financial crimes seem the most likely. Even in CREW’s reporting, they seemingly have evidence of Ivanka’s lies on federal disclosure forms. The idea that Javanka profited so thoroughly and so abundantly from their positions… lord. It also makes me wonder what Jared was up to all of those times he was on his secret missions to the Middle East.

One of the other stories about Ivanka is that she believes her political future hinges on the fact that she personally lobbied her father for pardons for her cronies.

Ivanka Trump used her status to help obtain over 140 pardons and commutations for victims of injustice as well as her father’s cronies, and she’s now plotting her political reemergence by highlighting the virtues of some of the clemency grants. While President Trump’s eldest daughter dismisses talk she is weighing a campaign against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), criminal justice reform is a popular, bipartisan issue to associate with as she plots her future endeavors.

“It would not be surprising if it’s among the causes she champions in her next chapter,” a source close to Ivanka told Axios. President Trump made headlines during his final days in office by issuing a raft of pardons and commutations, including a last-minute one to the former husband of Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro. Less known is the role his eldest daughter played, especially in relation to nonpolitical actions. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, intensively lobbied her father on the issue, several sources said. She attended multiple Oval Office meetings and made calls from empty offices in the West Wing.

The night before Joe Biden’s inauguration, she stayed at the White House until roughly 8:30 p.m., as she and other top Trump officials wrangled over controversial eleventh-hour pardons for presidential allies like Steve Bannon and Elliott Broidy. Once the final list was released — after 1 a.m. on Inauguration Day — she spent the next two hours calling the families of those for whom she had advocated.

[From Axios]

First of all, the idea of Ivanka primarying Marco Rubio is still hilarious to me. ‘Vanka will be in for a rude awakening about how the MAGA cult barely even tolerated her baby-whispering ass this whole time. Second of all, Ivanka desperately trying to take credit for “pardons” is just the last-ditch effort to make her sound super-important and busy. Perhaps even keen.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Dear Gossips, Sarah posted her review of Minari yesterday, the film I consider to be the best of 2020, well deserving of its multiple SAG nominations last week (including Best Ensemble, the SAG equivalent of Best Picture) and it should be a contender at the Oscars. Minari’s writer-director Lee Isaac…