Even before the “Armie Hammer is a rapist/cannibal/abuser” conversation which we’re having right now, Hammer was always “off” somehow. In a different era, he would have been a shellacked-hair leading man, but modern Hollywood has always had issues with where to “put” Armie. I thought, before now, that was about his propensity to pop off on social media and in interviews, but maybe once you’re with him face to face, he genuinely reads as what he is, a creepy guy. That being said, he’s still a white guy with family money. Surely powerful Hollywood types would race to protect him, right? Um, not so much? On Friday, Armie’s agents dropped him as a client. That’s a pretty major move.

Armie Hammer has been dropped by WME. Hammer losing his agency is the latest development of a career in freefall and comes amid controversy over graphic messages he allegedly sent several women over social media. Sources tell THR that his personal publicist has also stepped away.

Last week, Hammer exited The Offer, a Paramount+ series about the making of The Godfather. Before that, he was forced to resign from Lionsgate’s action romantic comedy, which would have paired him opposite Jennifer Lopez. (Josh Duhamel replaced him in the movie.)

Hammer’s string of exits came after the revelation of disturbing messages — as yet unverified — that were posted to an Instagram account run by a woman who said she had an affair with Hammer. The messages contain graphic descriptions of sexual fantasies that include abuse and even cannibalism. Several other women have since said they experienced similar exchanges with the Call Me By Your Name star. Hammer has denied the allegations.

[From THR]

It’s a really big deal, again, that Armie’s agents quit that bitch. Think about it: even Johnny Depp still has Hollywood representation (he joined CAA after leaving his longtime UTA agent over financial issues in 2016). You can be a completely garbage human being and you can still pay your agent to believe in you. So, obviously, this has people guessing that some even worse sh-t is about to come out. Like, they’re literally going to find body parts in his freezer or a woman’s body buried in his backyard. Word on the streets is that an exposé is going to drop soon, possibly in a major publication like, say, the Hollywood Reporter or the New York Times. Is Ronan Farrow on it?

armie hammer’s PUBLICIST QUIT he must have a body hidden somewhere holy shit

— mollusk (@molllllusk) February 6, 2021

patiently waiting for the new armie hammer scandal to drop pic.twitter.com/10T413nE1k

— sufjan simp (@maeveshelby) February 6, 2021

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Much to the surprise of the British press, the American media broke a story about Prince Harry. Harry was seen, photographed and video-recorded riding atop a double-decker bus in LA on Friday. With him on the bus? James Corden and a film crew. You can see the photos here at TMZ, which was the outlet to break the story. My first thought was “I wonder if it’s some really advanced promotion for the Invictus Games, which got pushed back another year.” Like, that seems to be the only reason why Harry has, historically, been in the mood for playful television appearances, to support one of his causes. But according to People Mag, he was filming some Carpool Karaoke. Hm.

Prince Harry and James Corden got together this week for some socially-distanced fun! The longtime friends were photographed together on Friday afternoon, riding around Hollywood on an open-air double decker tour bus, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

“They taped a COVID appropriate segment of Carpool Karaoke on the double decker,” a second source adds. “They have been friends for years and had a great time. A lot of joking around and laughter. They toured Hollywood and James showed Harry some special landmarks. They also chatted about Harry’s life in the US and his focus now,” the source shares.

In addition to a camera crew, the pair had a police escort and Harry’s personal security team was also present, the source notes. Not present for the day of fun was Meghan Markle, who stayed behind at their home in Montecito.

[From People]

Meghan hasn’t been seen out in public for a while. I think I know why, but I also know why they aren’t saying anything, so that’s that. As for Harry’s thing… I mean, I’ll watch it, and I bet Harry finds a way to make this charitable or issue-driven. But I’m also sure that all of the royal courtiers and correspondents are going to lose their sh-t about how “Hollywood Harry, who lives in a mansion, would rather spend time with James Corden than British soldiers!” Or some such nonsense. F–k that noise.

HARRY AND JAMES CORDEN WHAT pic.twitter.com/ArmJ6rpubE

— ?????? (@meghmarkle) February 6, 2021

Photos courtesy of WENN.

For the better part of a century, the US and UK have enjoyed a so-called “special relationship.” It’s a diplomatic and political tie forged in war and peace, and the special relationship has been strained at times but never broken. The special relationship usually means that the British prime minister is one of the first world leaders to visit a new American president, and it goes both ways – usually one of the first overseas visits a new president makes is to London. But not this year. Joe Biden isn’t a fan of Boris Johnson, and BoJo is still desperate to wipe away the Trump stink from his political life. So President Biden isn’t super-eager to come to the UK any time soon. His first visit will be this summer for the G7 Summit.

Joe Biden will meet the queen and other royals this summer, and we’re betting they’re looking forward to it way, way more than when the bombastic House of Trump descended on Buckingham Palace in June 2019. The queen will host Biden and other world leaders at the Palace before the G7 summit in June, the U.K. Sunday Times reports. She already called Biden to congratulate him prior to the inauguration.

Prince Charles and Camilla will be there too, alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton. Prince Harry is due to be in Britain at some point that month (with or without Meghan), but their attendance is as yet unknown. We very much hope that Princess Anne is there too, having mischievously stolen the scene during Trump’s visit. The idea, the Sunday Times says, is that perennial cementing of the “special relationship” between the U.K. and America, which remains close if not as close as when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan disappeared off into the sunset on their golf buggy.

The real relationship to watch is between Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Business Insider reports that the Biden administration is wary of Johnson’s ties to Trump.

The one-on-one meeting between the queen and Biden “is set to be her first significant diplomatic engagement after she returns to London,” following her and Prince Philip’s lockdown isolation at Windsor Castle, the Sunday Times says. The G7 will be held in Carbis Bay, on the north coast of the beautiful county of Cornwall, in the south west tip of England.

“The atmosphere is expected to contrast with Donald Trump’s first visit to the U.K. in July 2018, when Charles and William snubbed him, leaving the Queen to meet him alone,” the Sunday Times reports. Biden has also been invited to the House of Commons—which Trump wasn’t.

The Sunday Times said Prince Charles had sent congratulations to Biden, particularly happy that some of his early executive orders focused on climate change and the environment, like rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.

When Trump visited the U.K. there were huge protests—including the inflatable, diaper-clad, mouth-open Trump baby. He also created a mess close to home for the queen. “The presidential helicopter was said to have left damaging scorch marks on the queen’s prized lawns, much to her dismay,” the Sunday Times reported.

[From The Daily Beast]

I think it’s kind of funny that the British political and royal systems are now super-eager to distance themselves from Donald Trump and make it sound like they didn’t really welcome Trump with open arms. They did welcome him and they were happy to do so. I get that the Queen specifically was between a rock and a hard place, and that she was asked to roll out the red carpet for Trump and all of that. But I remember all of that sh-t well – no one in Buckingham Palace or Downing Street put up a fight about it. They gleefully welcomed a white supremacist racist into the fold, and then they criticized Meghan and Harry for wanting no part of it. Anyway, I hope President Biden merely gives the Queen a brief moment and then gets down to the work of repairing our NATO alliances and G7 alliances, because Donald Trump ripped all of that apart.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

I remember when Lou Dobbs was seen as some kind of legitimate news broadcaster, with his own show on a major cable news network. Then he seemingly went barking mad over immigration, and that was the gateway drug to a complete and utter off-the-deep-end spiral to lunacy and supporting Donald Trump. I think he went to Fox News first, but he was too f–king crazy even for them, so they relegated him to their version of CNBC, which is Fox Business. He apparently did very well over there – he had the highest ratings of anyone on Fox Business, which is sort of like saying you’re the most popular serial killer on death row.

Dobbs and his assortment of bad toupees were just named in a massive lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company. Smartmatic, like Dominion Voting Systems, were name-checked repeatedly on Fox News and Fox Business as part of the unhinged election conspiracy pushed by Trump and the people who worked for him. Dobbs, along with Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, were called out in the Smartmatic lawsuit as Fox anchors who pushed lies about the company. Smartmatic wants $2.7 billion from Fox and I hope they get every damn cent. Meanwhile, Fox News corporate is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. They fired Dobbs not even 24 hours after Smartmatic’s lawsuit was filed.

Lou Dobbs, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal media supporters, abruptly lost his pulpit on Friday when Fox Business canceled his weekday television show, which had become a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race.

Mr. Dobbs’s decade-long tenure at the network ended with little warning — a guest host filled in for his Friday slot — only a day after the election technology company Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and Fox News. The suit, which seeks damages of at least $2.7 billion, also named Mr. Dobbs as an individual defendant along with two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. Smartmatic specifically cited Mr. Dobbs’s program, which by late last year had become so packed with falsehoods about Mr. Trump’s defeat that Fox Business was forced to run a fact-checking segment debunking some of its own anchor’s assertions.

Executives at Fox did not elaborate on Friday about why they had canceled Mr. Dobbs’s program, which was the top-rated show on Fox Business and drew a bigger audience than its competition on CNBC. The network said in a statement that it regularly reviewed its programming lineup. “Plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate postelection, including on Fox Business,” the network said. “This is part of those planned changes.”

A person familiar with Fox’s decision said the network’s concerns about Mr. Dobbs predated this week’s filing of the Smartmatic lawsuit. But the person, who requested anonymity to describe private personnel matters, conceded that Mr. Dobbs’s extreme and unrepentant endorsements of Mr. Trump’s false election claims had imperiled his position, as did other moments. For instance, on the day of siege at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Dobbs described protesters as merely “walking between the rope lines.”

[From The NY Times]

Cancel culture warriors, where art thou? The mothership, Fox News, just cancelled one of your favorite nutjobs and you can’t blame it on AOC and Nancy Pelosi. I saw various people making this point, and so here goes: it’s amazing to see how simple it actually was to deplatform Nazis and cancel nutjobs, right? We were banging our heads against a wall for years about these batsh-t crazy liars and fascists, and all it took was a violent insurrection incited by Donald Trump, two multi-billion-dollar lawsuits and Jack Dorsey no longer feeling the need to put up with Nazis. And that was it! Trump is out of office, we don’t have baby-fisted Twitter tantrums, Giuliani & company have been effectively neutered and now Crotchety Lou Dobbs is gone. I hope drunk-ass Jeanine Pirro is next, and I have no idea what’s even happening with Bartiromo anymore. She used to be a respected CNBC anchor! To see her go Full MAGA is really weird. (Oh, and Tucker Carlson’s white supremacist, QAnon-supporting ass needs to go too.)

Screencaps courtesy of Fox News/Business.

Donald Trump quit SAG-AFTRA in a “you didn’t break up with me because I broke up with you first” letter which, as Duana noted when we texted about this yesterday, you have to remember, would have been directed to Gabrielle Carteris, aka Andrea Zuckerman which is an added fun fact to this already hil…

This is an ad but choosing Emma Roberts as a spokesperson for a Pretty Woman line is clearly a nod to her Aunt Julia. How long until a remake gets pitched with Emma as star? Maybe it already has. So many people are doing touch-ups at home, investing in new furniture or artwork. I think a lot of us …

I don’t even need to ask you how your hands are doing because I know they are falling off the bone. All this handwashing and constant sanitizing has legit aged the skin on my hands by at least two decades. And I hate to break it to you, but the 20 second happy birthday hand washing protocol is here …

73-year-old actress Lidia Franco says Adam Driver didn’t assault her, he was just really rude, disrespectful and pretty much a jackass. [Just Jared]
I have a 10-year-old boy’s sense of humor, so these unfortunate names made me laugh for like five minutes straight. [OMG Blog]
The new season of Riverdale is going to be… weird. [Pajiba]
Rachel Maddow destroys Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lies. [Towleroad]
Sia’s movie Music will come with a disclaimer now because of complaints from the autism community. She really pitched a fit about that. [Dlisted]
I want a “meh” sweater too! [Go Fug Yourself]
Jake Gyllenhaal is doing a Michael Bay movie? Good luck. [LaineyGossip]
Megan Thee Stallion has a new music video! [Jezebel]
This is why “Roscoe’s” was trending for most of Thursday. [Buzzfeed]
Lizzo is going to get a mullet? Oh god. [Seriously OMG]
Tessa Thompson’s Gucci look is very confusing. [RCFA]

Lizzo posted a video on Instagram of herself on the treadmill yesterday…in a very, VERY cute workout outfit. She’s wearing Lesley Hampton, from Lesley’s athleisure line. Lesley is an Indigenous Canadian designer and during the pandemic, she has focused more on athleisure clothing – for every body t…

I still feel giddy about the fact that more than 80 million Americans voted for a Black-Indian woman for Vice President. It’s really great, and we are allowed to sit here and be happy about that. I’ve also seen a lot of angst because as of yet, VP Kamala Harris hasn’t been seen doing much besides swearing in Cabinet members, swearing in new senators and standing behind President Biden when he signs executive orders. To that I say… it hasn’t even been a month, y’all. And not only that, but the Harris-Emhoffs’ living situation – the Naval Observatory – wasn’t even ready on January 20th! I think they’re still living in “temporary housing,” which is Blair House. Give VP Harris a minute to properly get herself sorted, that’s all I’m saying. I also think that for a while, VP Harris’s main impact will be “in the room” rather than in big, splashy rollouts with tons of press. For Joe and Jill Biden’s People Magazine cover story, President Biden spoke about the kind of relationship he’ll have with his vice president:

How will Joe Biden and Kamala Harris work together? It’ll be much in the same way as the former vice president did with Barack Obama, newly sworn-in President Biden tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

Asked whether Harris, 56, has drop-in privileges at the Oval Office, Biden says that she does — “I made the same deal with her that Barack and I made,” he says, referring to how Obama famously told Biden he would figure prominently in decision-making in the White House. “When Barack and I were working out our relationship early on, he said, ‘Do you have any requests?’ And I said, ‘Well just one: I get to be the last person in the room on every important decision. Not because you have to listen [or] do what I want. You make the decision.’ ”

Now sitting in the West Wing himself, Biden, 78, says Harris, 56, is afforded that same access.

“I wanted her available to participate in everything that I did. As I told her: I wanted her to be the last person in the room,” he says. “[Like] Barack and I, we have lunch alone once a week. That’s the deal when we’re both in country, which we’ll be for a while because of COVID, and I see her all the time.”

Biden and Obama’s relationship was one of the enduring stories of that administration, where Biden had broad responsibility as the No. 2. By many accounts, the men enjoyed a close personal relationship though they had their differences: in temperament and in approaches to policy-making.

In this week’s PEOPLE cover story, Biden sat down with wife Dr. Jill Biden, who echoed the importance of a strong relationship with Harris. The first lady says the vice president — the first woman, first Black person first Asian person in the role — is one of the “best things” about the administration.

[From People]

I think I’ve said this before, but the legacy and memory of Beau Biden has informed President Biden throughout all of this – the election and the new administration. Beau was a fan of Kamala Harris, and I think that’s one of the many reasons why Joe Biden chose her as his running mate. Plus, I’ve always loved the fact that Kamala was his biggest critic in the primary. He literally chose the Democratic woman whom he knew would call out his malarkey when she sees it. As for Biden promising to have a working relationship with Harris reminiscent of his relationship with Obama… I love it. Weekly lunches, last person in the room, all of it.

After 15 hours of debate and an all-night session, VP Kamala Harris cast her first tiebreaking vote.

The 51-50 vote paves the way toward the Senate passing Biden’s $1.9 trillion virus relief package. pic.twitter.com/0PUEaewR89

— The Recount (@therecount) February 5, 2021

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, People.