Newsletter Monday, February 26, 2018

[LaineyGossip.com - Calling all smuthounds!] Monday, February 26, 2018 [Intro for February 26, 2018]( [Abacus: Small Enough To Jail ](Dear Gossips, Something really exciting happened this weekend: several members of the Crazy Rich Asians team gathered in LA to screen the film for the first time. Kevin Kwan, the author of the book series, shared a photo on Instagram. He called it “one of the most unforgettable nights of my life”. No doubt. Can’t imagine what that would be like – to see your words, your story, manifest into a major motion picture. [A post shared by Kevin Kwan (@kevinkwanbooks)]( on Feb 23, 2018 at 5:27pm PST It must be a thrilling experience. And also an agonising wait! Six more months! Can we PLEASE get a trailer soon? This movie, hopefully, will be an event. This movie, hopefully, will be supported by a well-strategised, well-executed marketing campaign by Warner Bros. Because we’ve seen lately, especially in the last two weeks, that people are not only open to diverse storytelling, they’re hungry for it. The audience is there for it. The audience is there for a romantic comedy featuring an all-Asian cast. The biggest movie of 2018 is already Black Panther, with its predominantly all-black cast and fully representative cast and crew in front of and behind the camera. Could the most successful rom-com in years come from an Asian-American filmmaker adapting a book by an Asian-American writer, with an Asian cast and crew? On a related note, Buzzfeed published a piece this weekend written by Susan Cheng about how “[Asian-American Women in Hollywood say it’s twice as hard for them to say #MeToo](. A 2015/16 study showed that Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islanders continue to be more underrepresented on television than their black and Latin counterparts. Those from indigenous backgrounds are even less visible. We are now 6 days away from the Oscars. One of the five nominated films for Best Documentary Feature Oscar this year is called [Abacus: Small Enough To Jail](, a play off the expression “too big to fail” that was introduced during the 2008 financial crisis. There was only ONE bank in the United States that was indicted during that time. It’s a bank with only ONE branch - Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a family-owned business serving the Chinatown community in New York City. At the time of the indictment, Abacus was the 2,531st largest bank in the US. To be clear, two thousand, five hundred, and thirty banks were BIGGER than Abacus during the financial crisis…and they were the only ones charged. Of course you’ll recall, all the big boys, the ones who were “too big to fail”, you know what they did, and you know what happened to them. What happened to Abacus was that their employees, most of them Chinese, were “herded like cattle” down the hallways, made to shuffle in shame out the door of their workplace, like a “chain gang”, in front of reporters who were deliberately called to cover the event, when the indictments came down. The (hoped-for) success of Crazy Rich Asians does not guarantee that we will no longer see the system cherry-pick, across all industries, from banking to entertainment, who it works for and who it works against. Of course not. But it could be a beginning to acknowledging that people from different places, with different faces, who occupy different spaces, have stories too –and perhaps empathy can grow from there. Abacus: Small Enough To Jail [is available]( on Amazon and on iTunes now. Yours in gossip, Lainey [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 2:00 PM [Michael B. Jordan burns everything down]( [Michael B Jordan promotes Black Panther in New York, February 16, 2018](First he was the Human Torch, then he burned the garden of the heart-shaped herb, now he’s burning all the books—Michael B. Jordan seems to like movies where he gets to burn sh*t on screen. Kathleen calls him Michael Bae Jordan but maybe we should call him Michael B. Burnin’. (I’ll show myself out.) The latest “Michael B. Jordan sets sh*t on fire” movie is HBO’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which stars Jordan and Michael Shannon as book-burning fireman Montag and his supervisor Beatty, respectively. (For Shannon, this is a re-team with his 99 Homes director, Ramin Bahrani, who extracted a great performance from him in that movie. Interested to see what Bahrani gets from him this time.) The teaser has been released and it’s a lot of Jordan burning sh*t and Michael Shannon being vaguely threatening. It looks good based on seventy seconds of mostly montages of books and flames. There’s something sort of meta about this adaptation landing on HBO, since the book is (partly) about mass entertainment taking over more highbrow forms like literature. But now people won’t even go to the movies, so stuff like literary adaptations are relegated to premium cable. The parlor wall is coming true. Although I feel like if you tried to take people’s books away right now, it would not go well and a bunch of (allegedly) Rude Teens would emerge to save us from ourselves. If we’ve learned anything in the past couple weeks it’s that the Rude Teens of Generation Z are going to save us, so really Montag shouldn’t be played by [Michael B. Jordan](, he should be played by a scowling seventeen-year-old who can simultaneously challenge the status quo and deliver scathing takes and wicked burns. In fact, that would be the tagline: He burns, and HE BURNS. Really, I will just show myself out now. Attached - MBJ promoting Black Panther in New York last week. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 8:24 PM [Jameela Jamil’s Instagram Outrage]( [Jameela Jamil attends the Nespresso British Academy Film Awards Nominees Party at Kensington Palace, London, February 17, 2018](As we discussed recently on [Show Your Work](, there are lots of reasons to be fascinated by The Good Place actress Jameela Jamil. Mostly, I’m amazed at how different she is from every other first-time-on-a-surprise-hit-network-show star. Obviously, she’s 5’11 (hence the descriptions of her character, Tahani Al-Jamil, as a ‘sexy giraffe’), British, and of Indian & Pakistani origin – and before we go further, let’s just take a minute to notice that The Good Place has diversity and people of colour baked into its DNA… and is also the breakout network comedy of the last year. Coincidence? I think not. But the most interesting difference about Jamil is that she… says stuff. Has opinions. In a way that still feels surprising for a newly-famous network star, and which is depressing and refreshing in its rarity. She wrote a whole blog post about what she referred to as the '[Aziz Ansari Clusterf-ck]('. (The fact that she maintains a blog at all is amazing). She has no love for Instagram influencers. In an interview with The Cut, she referenced a period of weight loss, and googled '[Jameela Jamil fat](' before her interviewer had the chance to. Those last two points are particularly fascinating when it comes to Jamil’s Instagram activity this weekend. Her stories are usually full of tall-girl awkwardness and self-effacing jokes, but when I saw this, I wasn’t mad at it, as I am always here for some magazine-based rage. It’s a horrifying image, obviously. Worse than if any one of them had their weight published alone, since the way the picture’s laid out suggests that you compare them to each other, and ostensibly, to yourself – photoshop and hours of makeup notwithstanding. And the cloying comment ‘Does Kim look like 56?’ begs for a ‘who the f*ck cares? What does it matter?’ But [Jameela]( cared. So much so that she published a picture with her ‘weight’ in ‘f-cking KG’ – that is, with a list of all the things that actually make up the way she judges herself. Which was immediately followed by a storm of women who sent their own images covered in the things that make up who they are, from ‘A medical degree’ and ‘The insatiable hunger of my dreams’ to ‘My own business’ and ‘An entire cheeseboard’. They’re commemorated in [this blog post](, where Jameela rages about the body expectations placed on women and the unfair weight (sorry) they’re given when compared to other accomplishments. It’s a compelling and affecting read, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but it involves the word ‘bumholes’. But when you look at Jameela’s original image of what makes her up, it’s hard to miss the last item on the list: “I like myself in spite of everything I’ve been taught by the media to hate myself about.” I believe this, and it’s important, and yet… she’s in the media. For years she was a TV presenter and DJ in Britain, and now literally plays a character whose height and beauty are a punchline. She appears on red carpets in gorgeous gowns, dressed by people who value her beauty, which is part of what got her her job, and her platform. The revelation that she used to be heavier is an insightful anecdote, but if the difference in weight had gone the other way, would anyone be as excited to write about it, or to interview her in the first place? I keep rolling half-formed thoughts around in my brain. “But… beauty privilege! Wealth privilege! You’re inside the machine! Photo shoots!” There’s a conflict there for sure, one I feel in myself every time I stump for the funny but less-than-perfect-looking actress in a casting session – and then notice the shoes I changed three times on my way out the door. But I’ve decided I don’t care. Because if I’m being honest, most of us do care. Most of us aren’t only one thing, and are tired of having to pretend we are. We can and do contain multitudes, and what a person does for a living shouldn’t have any effect on whether they’re ‘allowed’ to hold certain opinions. And Jameela’s very clear that she’s not asking anyone to stop using makeup or feeling sexy or any of the above – but she does want transparency on what it takes to get that way, particularly for people in the public eye … which, one assumes, includes herself. You can want the tyranny of pressure on women to look a certain way (still, in 2018) to stop, and also want to look like your best self when you go out. You can think the question “Does Kim look like 56?” is asinine, offensive, and borderline abusive, and still acknowledge that your expectations for yourself sometimes need to be brought in line with your standards for others. Situations are allowed to be complicated and bullsh-t at the same time, and I’m tired of the constantly moving goalposts. None of us is perfect, in our ideals or bodies or words, and the point is not to be perfect, but to keep getting better. Right? Which is why we need to be reminded of these lessons in any form they’ll give them to us. So I can appreciate what she’s telling me, and think she looks like a sexy giraffe while she’s doing so. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 7:31 PM [Smutty Social Media, February 26, 2018]( [Mae Whitman out in New York, February 24, 2018](In celebration of their 9th wedding anniversary, Gisele posted photo from her and Tom’s wedding. It’s not the first one – she did this a few years ago (I’ll circle back to that in a minute). This photo is definitely from the church ceremony in California– I looked up the St. Monica Catholic Church (where they were married) on Yelp and [compared the altars](. There are a few grainy pap photos from the Costa Rica wedding – you can see them [here](). I’ve compared it to the social media photos posted 3 years ago and I’m not 100% sure it’s [the same dress](. The cut is similar but the fabric looks different – or that could be the lighting and filters. That being said, with their budget and designer house connections, do you think she limited herself to two? Or were there multiple dress changes? [A post shared by Gisele Bündchen (@gisele)]( on Feb 26, 2018 at 5:47am PST [A post shared by Tom Brady (@tombrady)]( on Feb 26, 2018 at 4:00am PST Justin Theroux is back on Instagram – with puppies! Because there is no better distraction from your divorce from America’s TV Sweetheart (yes, she still is) than snuggly dogs. But this is how we know a part of Justin loves the drama: he tagged Selena Gomez. Of course it’s for an altruistic cause (no-kill pet shelters) and nothing smutty (he has [done it before]( and not just to her but other animal lovers like Beth Stern). But Justin was married to one of the biggest tabloid stars in the world. He knows that this will be willfully misinterpreted and picked up by low-tier outlets because [it has happened before](. How long until the “Selena and Justin Theroux –Pregnant and Engaged! Jen and Justin Bieber Betrayed” headlines start running? Maybe this is revenge for the Brad Pitt [Post-it note story](. [A post shared by @justintheroux]( on Feb 25, 2018 at 6:54pm PST These are the new cakes of Instagram. When cut, candy pours out. Very photogenic. But how does it taste? Can you actually eat this kind of cake? Do the textures (fluffy cake and hard candy) complement one another? [A post shared by Katie Holmes (@katieholmes212)]( on Feb 26, 2018 at 5:21am PST In an earlier post today, Lainey mentioned [Rosetta and Balthazar Getty](. They survived Hurricane Sienna Miller (she was a total hurricane at the time and it was great for gossip!). But that’s because Rosetta (who is extremely connected in her own right) had to eat a lot of sh-t to make it work with Balthazar, a 43-year-old DJ who [sleeps until 11 am every day](. [A post shared by Rosetta Getty (@rosettagetty)]( on Feb 19, 2018 at 10:17am PST I’m not watching this clip because [are you f-cking kidding me](? This is her [idea of PRIVACY](? She is deeply offended by a picture of her child being published, but this is what she chooses for a talk show anecdote – literal ass worms. This is why I can’t with her shout-y gossip shaming. (Although I begrudgingly appreciate her work on The Good Place.) [A post shared by Joel McHale (@joelmchale)]( on Feb 24, 2018 at 9:55am PST Why is it always “good?” The Good Place, The Good Doctor, The Good Wife, Good Girls Revolt. That’s just off the top of my head. That being said, it’s Retta, Christina Hendricks and Mae Whitman so this automatically gets a spot on the PVR for 3 episodes, minimum. [A post shared by mae margaret whitman (@mistergarf)]( on Feb 26, 2018 at 7:28am PST I want to believe. just read a conspiracy theory that Disney called it 'Frozen' so that when you Google for 'Disney Frozen' you don't get results about Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head. I want to believe. — Dan Hett (@danhett) [February 24, 2018]( [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 6:23 PM [Ewan McGregor dumped?]( [Ewan McGregor takes his daughter for a bike ride in Santa Monica, February 25, 2018](So far I’m only seeing this covered by UK outlets – perhaps because the original source of the report is usually so full of sh-t. That would be Star Magazine. Star reports in its latest issue that Mary Elizabeth Winstead broke up with Ewan McGregor because she didn’t want to be called a “homewrecker” anymore. Briefly, Mary and Ewan worked together on Fargo. She and her husband split up. Then he and his wife of 22 years Eva Mavrakis split up, but that was only confirmed after pictures of Ewan and Mary kissing were published in the UK papers. Eve hasn’t directly addressed whether or not Ewan cheated on her. But she did call their split “[disappointing and upsetting](” which many took to be a subtle validation of the story that Ewan was, indeed, unfaithful. And then there’s this – Esther McGregor’s post on Instagram back in January that seemed to be directed at her disappointment with her father who, in her case, in her home, quite rightly, would be the real “homewrecker”, if that’s the word we have to use. [A post shared by Esther Rose (@esther.mcgregor)]( on Jan 17, 2018 at 4:27pm PST [Ewan](’s car was seen at Eve’s place [this weekend]( just as Star’s report that [Mary]( dumped him was getting around. He also took one of his younger children bike riding. Remember though, it’s Star Magazine. Maybe it’s the one story they get right this year. Will Ewan and Eve will end up like Balthazar and Rosetta Getty after his affair with Sienna Miller? Here's Ewan out in Santa Monica with his daughter yesterday. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 4:57 PM [Mark Wahlberg on the “marketplace”]( [Mark Wahlberg](A few weeks ago, it was revealed that Mark Wahlberg made $1.5 million for reshoots on All The Money In The World while Michelle Williams [got per diem](. His initial salary for the film was $5 million and she was paid $650K. Eventually he and WME, the talent agency that represents both Mark and Michelle, donated his reshoot fee to Time’s Up. Mark was interviewed recently by ET and spoke about the situation for the first time, calling it “awkward”. [Click here]( to see the video (it auto-plays sound so heads-up if you're at work). I love how, at the end there, he had to throw in the detail about “taking a substantial pay cut” to work with Ridley Scott. WHAT A TRUE ARTIST. But here’s the part I want to unpack: "It's not me who decides who gets paid what. Your value's based on what the marketplace dictates, and with that particular situation, it was very awkward." He’s not wrong about the marketplace. It’s always been a men-first marketplace. This is the sexism. Since sexism is what’s been established as the status quo, of course the marketplace is going to dictate that men, white men, are prioritised while women and people of colour are not paid – and treated – equally. This is exactly what Time’s Up and the push for equality, in all industries, is confronting: the marketplace, a marketplace that is the result of a status quo that advantages, time and again, people like [Mark Wahlberg](. He talks about the marketplace like he has nothing to do with it. When, really, he has everything to do with it. Or he could. Marky Mark started out in the Funky Bunch and became a Hollywood mogul. He produces all kinds of lucrative projects. Mark Wahlberg is well-positioned to confront the inequities in the marketplace to change who it benefits and how. Casually talking about the marketplace like it’s not up to him is at best ignorant and at worst disingenuous. Because for Time’s Up to work, everyone has to participate. It’s not enough to put on a Time’s Up pin. The whole point of the initiative is to support projects and talent that have not had the same opportunities. And I’m not sure that making a donation after a public outcry counts. When you think of a “Mark Wahlberg project”, what do those stories look like? How many women are in those stories? What is the diversity in front of and behind the camera? Two years ago [Ryan Murphy]( pledged that, going forward, his aim for all his projects is to see inclusion across the board. One year [after the announcement](, “Ryan Murphy's Half Foundation has succeeded in its plans to see, as its title would suggest, more than half of the prolific showrunner's TV programming be directed by women. Ahead of its time in front of reporters Wednesday at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, FX unveiled a look at the strides that the Half Foundation has made in its first year. Of Murphy's slate, 60 percent of shows have women directors and 94 percent meet the minority requirement”. Five years from now, are we going to be talking about Mark Wahlberg like we talk about Ryan Murphy? What Ryan Murphy has been doing WILL change the marketplace. Because it increases the value of a different set of stories told by a new class of storytellers. The marketplace is flawed. Shrugging at it, like it’s a fixed entity, the way Mark Wahlberg did, doesn’t change sh-t. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 4:23 PM [Britney’s “biggest award”]( [Britney Spears attends the 4th Annual Hollywood Beauty Awards at Avalon Hollywood, February 25, 2018](We don’t see Britney Spears very often anymore on red carpets, at award shows, at major events. Over the last few years, Britney appears to have been able to rebuild a relationship with her fame in a way that works for her. And the results have been largely positive. She’s pretty active on social media, posting consistently on Instagram – and not just promotional posts either. Many of her posts are pure personality – she’s sensitive at times, silly at others, and vain too. There is the occasional inspirational quote. Her kids show up. She’s working out A LOT. And there’s her boyfriend, of over a year now, Sam Asghari: [A post shared by Britney Spears (@britneyspears)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 1:25pm PST Sam was with [Britney]( last night at the Hollywood Beauty Awards where her fragrance, Fantasy In Bloom, was named Fragrance of the Year. Here’s what she said in her acceptance speech: Next year? Well the new fragrance is called Sunset Fantasy, and she’s launched over 20 of them. Britney’s scents make a LOT of money. And her tour this summer will probably make a lot of money. She’s taking the Piece Of Me show through July and August across the US and select stops in Europe to celebrate the end of her Las Vegas residency. It’s been four years, over a million tickets sold, 250 shows at $450K per show. There are no plans yet for what Britney will do once Piece Of Me wraps. But there has already been speculation that another Vegas deal is possible. Last year was the 10th anniversary of her Blackout album. This year is the 10th anniversary of the Circus album. Womanizer is 10 years old in September! Where did it go?! [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 3:12 PM [February 26, 2018 – Smutty Shout-Outs]( [Cosima and Delphine for Chris](Chris! Congratulations on your accounting designation – here’s a message from Jenn: “You did it! The long hours and hard work paid off!” HAPPY BIRTHDAY! By request, here are Cosima and Delphine from Orphan Black. [via GIPHY]( [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 2:22 PM [Privacy Policy]( - [Unsubscribe](