Newsletter Monday, December 19, 2016

[LaineyGossip.com - Calling all smuthounds!] Monday, December 19, 2016 [Intro for December 19, 2016] [Donnie Yen attends the 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' photocall at The Corinthia Hotel on December 14, 2016 in London, England] Dear Gossips, Did you see Rogue One this weekend? It made a lot of money at the box office so some of you must have. Sarah’s review of Rogue One is coming later this morning. I thought the film was too long but I liked it very much. And one of things I liked most was the relationship between Donnie Yen’s Chirrut and Jiang Wen’s Baze. The bond between the two characters is so strong that fans are already [shipping them], resulting in speculation as to whether or not Chirrut and Baze are the first gay couple in the Star Wars universe. Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan analysed the Chirrut and Baze scenes from the film in his piece [“Are These the Gay Star Wars Characters We’ve Been Looking For?”] on Friday, pointing out that “studio movies often speak in code when it comes to gay characters”, and it’s true, because if Chirrut and Baze were a straight man and a woman, the filmmakers probably wouldn’t have to be so coy and ambiguous about whether or not the two were, indeed, an “old married couple”. Just like Paul Feig felt like he had to be coy about whether or not Kate McKinnon’s character was a lesbian in Ghostbusters. For me though, a less contentious takeaway from the Chirrut and Baze connection was how they represented male love. These are two formidable warriors. And it takes nothing away from their “masculinity” that they care deeply about each other – and aren’t afraid to show it, express it, with jokes, with words, and with touch. Their shared affection is undeniable. And, also, it’s tender. I don’t love the word “tender”. “Tender” squicks me, like “moist”. But I specifically use it here because we don’t often see adult men (and especially a certain type of adult male, a physical “macho” male) treat each other with tenderness. Back in May, Kathleen wrote about the [Michael B Jordan and Ryan Coogler’s portrait in Vanity Fair] and the reaction – backlash – the two received about the image. Michael is holding Ryan by the head, an intimate and TENDER gesture that represents their closeness, their friendship, their love for each other. A month after that, Rae Sremmurd (if you think you don’t know Rae Sremmurd, you do if you’ve ever watched a Mannequin Challenge because Black Beatles is their song) covered The Fader. They were shirtless, leaning against each other and that too was abhorrent to some. In response to that reaction, David Dennis, Jr wrote a beautiful piece in The Undefeated [“On Rap, Hollywood, and sport – and black male affection, friendship, and love”] that’s probably one of my favourite articles of the year. As we’ve seen this year, however, it’s not just black men and black male affection. Toxic male masculinity exists everywhere, no matter the race. Toxic male masculinity is a problem on university campuses, in fraternities, in locker rooms, on tour buses, and in presidential elections. And both [women and men are suffering for it]. Millions of people around the world went to the movies this weekend for Star Wars and saw two men openly, sensitively, and tenderly declare their love for each other. I’m not mad at that. Yours in gossip, Lainey PS. Thanks to everyone who made offers for my letgo listed items over the last few weeks. If you missed the details, my original post [is here]. Gisele C bought the DSquared shoes and chose the Humane Society of Canada, the Kotur clutch went to Chandel L and she chose the Canadian Red Cross, and Sophie R bought my Alice + Olivia dress and chose Covenant House Vancouver. Hope you all enjoy the items and to make room for your upcoming gifts, list your stuff [on letgo]. It’s super easy. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 2:18 PM [Show Your Work: Nut Crushers and Trojan Horses] [Emmy Rossum] didn’t just demand equal pay for the 8th season of Shameless, she actually [asked for MORE pay than co-star William H Macy], to compensate for all the seasons she was paid less than he was. As Duana describes it on this week’s episode of our Show Your Work podcast, she had them over a barrel. Emmy and the producers have come to terms. And Duana’s like… come on, Lainey, isn’t it time to put Emmy Rossum back on the site after years of going out of your way to ignore her? Well, here she is, kicking off our show. What Emmy did is newsworthy but what I want to point out is that part of what she did was that she claimed the credit. She made a statement: give me the money because I carry this show. Basically it’s a form of bragging. A couple of weeks ago on [The Social], we talked about bragging, and whether or not it’s useful. Despite the fact that business study after business study encourages women to brag more, to credit themselves more, women still feel uncomfortable with self-promotion. Women have been told that it’s unattractive to brag. That it makes them unlikable. But the consequence of not bragging, especially in the workplace? According to [this Forbes article], by distributing credit instead of claiming it, as men often do, women humble themselves in some industries out of as much as a million dollars over the course of their careers. And still, many of our viewers expressed aversion to the idea of bragging, that it was a turnoff for them, worried that they were turn off others. Do you want to be likeable, or do you want to get paid? Lainey! We can be both! Sure. But first we have to stop socially punishing women who brag, who claim credit, when we certainly don’t punish men for it. The biggest braggart in the world was just elected president of the United States while his opponent kept getting criticised for citing her resumé. Speaking of the biggest braggart in the world, everybody’s still talking about last week’s Lauren Duca’s Teen Vogue piece on how Donald Trump [Is Gaslighting America]. Just today the New York Times published an article about [Teen Vogue’s leadership]. On the podcast, Duana and I specifically discuss the reaction to Teen Vogue’s vision, the surprise that this kind of political discourse is coming from this particular magazine, why this is a f-ck yeah moment, and how it fits right into the position Rebecca Traister lays out in her book [All The Single Ladies], one of the best reads of the year. Next year, Girls will be over. The first trailer for the 6th and final season was released last week. Girls is on its way out. [Issa Rae]’s Insecure is not only on the way in, its message in its first season was basically how much we need it and didn’t know and now you don’t know what to do without it. Duana and I talk about our hopes for Girls and for Insecure and then we close on a few highs and lows from 2016. Thank you for your support of Show Your Work. We are so happy that we’re doing it. And we are so happy that you care. The Podcast is below the video. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 8:29 PM [Blade Runner’s potential answer] [Blade Runner 2049 ] Blade Runner is one of the most influential sci-fi films of the last thirty years, building off the dirt-and-muck aesthetic of Star Wars and the headier, more philosophical engine of 2001: A Space Odyssey. So it’s only natural, in our current nostalgia-driven culture, that a beloved classic be revisited for the twenty-first century. We now have our first look at a sequel, Blade Runner 2049 and it’s very orange. So orange. It’s the most orange. There can be none more orange. The color saturation is cranked Mad Max: Fury Road, and director Denis Villeneuve is showing off some eerie future-scapes that will give this movie a claim to being more than just a branding exercise for a studio struggling with its franchises. (Warner Brothers just [sacked their development chief] less than a year after he signed a three-year extension, but sure, everything is fine over there.) [Ryan Gosling] takes over as the lead, with [Harrison Ford] coming back as Decker. Old Indy, old Han, now old Decker—we keep making Ford play elderly versions of his most beloved characters. No wonder he’s so grumpy: We’re constantly reminding him of his mortality. (Also, I don’t think we actually needed to see any of these characters age.) Who knows what the plot is about. Ryan Gosling is hunting Decker, it’s implied they’re the same, so same song, different verse, as it goes. It looks good, I guess? It certainly looks very pretty. Villeneuve knows how to compose a shot. And I like Gosling + Ford, in theory. The Gos can be so f*cking precious, and Ford has no time for that actory sh*t, so it will be fun to see how they [play off each other]. But Blade Runner is a film that has never felt like it needed to be revisited, especially given how many alternate cuts are commercially available of the original. The beauty of Blade Runner is the mystery and the debate. It’s the open ending. I’m okay with a sequel that builds on that mystery—is he or isn’t he. I’m not okay with a sequel that offers a definitive answer. (Lainey: ummmm…what if you’re one of those people who’s never seen the original? Do you need the mystery or not?) [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 8:03 PM [Smutty Tingles] [Two puppies, first snow]. This is SO f-cking cute (Dlisted) Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom [ride the mountain] (Just Jared) [Margot Robbie got married] (Cele|bitchy) Macaulay Culkin [hangs out with Paris Jackson] (TooFab) Are these the [right boots for the beach]??? (TMZ) How are these [Love Advents not just the same] as the Victoria’s Secret catalogue? (The Superficial) OMG WHAT IS JOSS WHEDON [TRYING TO SAY ABOUT GWYNETH PALTROW]??? (Pajiba) [A terrible blue dress] on Jennifer Lawrence (Go Fug Yourself) The Twin Peaks music [goes with just about anything] (OMG BLOG!!!) [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 7:05 PM [Julia Roberts. On Your TELEVISION] [Julia Roberts at the 69th Cannes Film Festival - 'Money Monster’ - Premiere in May 2016] [Julia Roberts] has signed on to a TV adaptation of Maria Semple’s [Today Will Be Different]. As with all things Julia Roberts, it’s very hard not to think this was done expressly for me and my benefit. I love Maria Semple, and recommended her book Where’d You Go Bernadette to everyone who would listen. Obviously I’m not some sort of visionary in this regard, given that it was a crazy runaway bestseller, but I feel like I personally got to tell a lot of people about it. I also get to tell a lot of people why Julia Roberts is still a delight – so this is all for me, basically. But it’s fun to think about how this came to be. How does Julia Roberts, who never ever has to work again, find her way back to TV, only on the most charming project we’ve heard of in years? Yes, true, she was in The Normal Heart, but that wasn’t about her…and Maria Semple, who’s writing the series, also worked in TV before so there’s a decent chance it will be great, and come on now… Julia Roberts in a limited series? Where she’s front and centre and the woman in question is charming if complicated? Guys. That’s ALL the awards. You know this. All the red carpets, all the gowns, all the “Who’s Natalie?” There might even be a very special Oprah interview about “JULIA AT FIFTYYYYYYYY! (next October)”. Enough to sustain us and the Julia legend for at least another decade. Oh, and the lines in the articles about how there’s no network yet? Uh, the networks are going to fall over themselves GAGGING for this. A thousand network executives were born and made because of Julia Roberts. Trust me. Don’t try to tell me this wasn’t made especially for me. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 6:48 PM [The pretty Pope] [Jude Law and Philipa Coan are seen during New Jersey Devils Vs. New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on December 18, 2016 in New York City] [Jude Law] was in New York this weekend, seen here with his daughter Iris and his girlfriend Phillipa Coan yesterday at the Devils-Rangers game. On Saturday HBO confirmed that his new series, The Young Pope, will premiere in North America January 15th: His religion is revolution. [#TheYoungPope] premieres January 15, 2017. [pic.twitter.com/VgrhtdvA54] — HBO (@HBO) [December 16, 2016] The limited series started airing in Europe in October and the reviews I’ve read have been really strong. The Guardian says it’s “[anxiety-inducing]” and that Jude’s Pius XIII is manipulative, duplicitous, vengeful, charming, and an irresistible performer, a pontificating performer. In the trailers, he’s also super campy. And so pretty. He’s really wearing the sh-t out of that hat, non? I’m excited for this. I also wonder how my Polish Catholic in-laws will react to it. They don’t have HBO. We already got them a Christmas present but I’m thinking we should add a subscription. By the way, since The Young Pope premieres a week after the Golden Globes, I’ll predict that he’ll be added to the list as a presenter. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 5:33 PM [Casey Affleck is A-Okay on SNL] [SNL stills from December 17, 2016] Did you watch SNL over the weekend? If so, you saw some awesome performances by Chance the Rapper. It was the last episode of 2016, and Chance came to shut that sh*t down, crushing his live performances and featuring in one of the night’s best sketches, “Jingle Barack”, celebrating President Obama’s last Christmas in the White House, and maybe our last Christmas, period. This sketch is pretty great, easily the best of the night, timely and topical but still a little weird and super specific, done in the style of “Christmas in Hollis”—DMC makes a cameo—and it has Leslie Jones’ only good bit for the night. It also has break-dancing Jesus and oh yeah, there’s the host: [Casey Affleck]. Or [click here] to watch in Canada. Someday Chance the Rapper will be a host/performer, but this week it was Casey Affleck’s first time hosting Saturday Night Live, and while it wasn’t a disaster it wasn’t a great episode, either. Ideally, the host is treated like a fun accessory, added to sketches that would work regardless of who features in them. Affleck certainly fits into that mold, though he seems bemused to be there. (We’re confused, too, Casey.) His monologue was not especially good, and missed a trick in not making the whole thing about how f*cking weird it is for someone to host SNL while promoting a super sad movie. The one joke they make about this is the best part of the monologue. [Click here] to view in the US and [here] to watch in Canada. The second-best sketch of the night was the Dunkin’ Donuts video short—increasingly SNL’s most consistent material is pre-taped, slowly turning “Live” into irony—which seems to be divisive. I have a Dunkin’ in the lobby of my office building, and it’s a total horror show every morning, right down to the white collar and blue collar customers sniping at one another, so it works for me. This sketch also gets points for acknowledging that sometimes Casey Affleck can (allegedly) be a dick to the people around him. Kate McKinnon had a strong night, with a Ms. Rafferty sketch about seeing Santa Claus in which Affleck is almost superfluous. Ms. Rafferty requires a straight man, though, so Casey and his “Duck Dynasty” beard come in useful. These three also did a much less funny sketch that not even Chance can save, which makes me wonder if Strong and McKinnon pulled the short straws. (McKinnon and Cecily Strong teamed up for a funny-ish Hillary Clinton bit, too.) Watch the terrible “bar fight” sketch at your own risk. Instead, here is Chance the Rapper crushing “Finish Line/Drown”: Then there were the weird sketches, like this “pervy elves” bit that fails to work, and the oddly hostile “Microsoft Robot Presentation” sketch. It’s always nice to see Fred Armisen, but I’m still not sure what the punchline is supposed to be. Is it that the robots are gay? That they’re so stereotypically gay? Or that some tech bro is weirded out by their sexuality? Which one are we supposed to be laughing at? I don’t understand this sketch on any level, beginning with how it got on air in the first place. I do, however, appreciate the subtext that maybe Casey Affleck is an asshole. So the littlest Affleck didn’t embarrass himself, and SNL is just the latest stop on the “Casey Affleck is A-Okay” Tour. At least this episode will best be remembered for Chance the Rapper and his sublime performances. I’ll leave you with a short clip of Chance performing “Same Drugs”. Maybe next year, he can come back and host, too. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 5:15 PM [Tom Cruise: moving to Florida?] [Tom Cruise at the Berlin premiere of 'Jack Reacher: Never Go Back' on October 22, 2016] [Page Six reported] yesterday that Tom Cruise is moving to Clearwater, Florida. Apparently Scientology is big in Clearwater and he’s been unloading properly in LA and has purchased a 20,000 square foot penthouse in Clearwater with a private rooftop pool and a 9 car garage for only $3 million. I mean it when I say “only” $3 million too. Because you can’t get a house a quarter of that size in Vancouver or Toronto for less than $2 million. As Mimi would say, it’s abusive. Anyway, sources tell Page Six that Tom’s relocating to Clearwater because he might think that “he can receive the most effective and professional counseling in Clearwater — which he thinks will make him a more powerful person and get him closer to being part of a super race.” The “super race” training takes place at the Scientology “Super Power Building” two blocks from his home. Seriously. That’s what it’s called? The Super Power Building? This is what kills me. Is that like where the Avengers hang out? I would have had a hard time not laughing if someone invited me to the Super Power Building. Their vocabulary is ridiculous! These are the kinds of words you use when you’re a kid playing games with your friends in the basement. And that’s what makes it so funny and I know, I know this is not funny because so many people have been hurt by the church, I know, and it’s terrible. But is it also OK to say that I don’t understand how anyone can keep a straight face? Tom Cruise is moving to Clearwater to be closer to the Super Power Building so that he can train to be part of a super race… and, what? Put on a cape and reverse time??? Right now, there are real people having real meetings over in that Super Power Building about this very thing and none of them are joking. Imagine yourself at that meeting, talking about how Tom Cruise is on his way for more super powers practice. Today we’re going to work on Tom’s levitation and mindreading. He needs to be able to do both at the same time. Tomorrow we’ll have to set up targets for his laser eyes. WTFFFF??? [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 4:12 PM [Rogue One almost stands alone] [Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Riz Ahmed, Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, and Donnie Yen attend the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures And Lucasfilm's 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' at the Pantages Theatre on December 10, 2016 in Hollywood, California] The first spin-off of the Star Wars cinematic universe, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, starts on a familiar path: Trouble comes to a remote farm, where the hero of the piece is left orphaned. Jyn Erso ([Felicity Jones]) is abandoned when the Empire comes calling, dragging her scientist father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), back to complete the Death Star. Jyn is left to be raised by an old friend of her father’s, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). From here, Rogue One starts veering into fresh new territory as Jyn is not a Skywalker or a Jedi, and these are the darkest days of the Empire, before the Force reawakens, when the Jedi have been defeated and their one-time guards are left to beg on the streets. The worlds that Jyn visits are dirty even by Star Wars standards, and Stormtroopers linger around every corner. Jyn herself is something of a street rat, with a rap sheet and a hardscrabble attitude that, at least in the beginning, separates her from the standard “plucky hero” type favored by Star Wars thus far. In fact, Rogue One is basically Seven Samurai for Star Wars, with the team consisting of six pretty tough customers. Besides actual criminal Jyn, there is Cassian Andor ([Diego Luna]), a Rebel assassin; K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), a reprogrammed Imperial droid; Bodhi Rook ([Riz Ahmed]), an Imperial deserter; and Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), former guardians of a Jedi temple. At first glance, these are not your typical heroes, not least because this is a refreshingly diverse crew. Every face is different, and everyone is a hero, which means that ANYONE can be a hero. Perhaps Chirrut, with his dedication to the Force, could be considered a “classic” hero, but Jyn and Cassian are the leads of Rogue One, and neither one is especially heroic to start things off. And that’s GREAT. It’s INTERESTING. It provides fractious and engrossing character interactions, as Jyn and Cassian have competing goals and missions and don’t really like or trust one another but are forced to work together. For two-thirds of the movie, Rogue One gets by on the power of their salty relationship. The movie needs that edge because there are some story problems early on that only resolve because the last act of Rogue One turns into a different movie. Don’t get me wrong—the last third of Rogue One is stellar unto itself. But Jyn and Cassian are completely different people in that final act, suddenly friendly—so friendly, in fact, you kinda want them to kiss—and Jyn goes from reluctant Rebel forced to fight as a get-out-of-jail-free card, to a stirring speechifier rallying the troops. Again, that’s okay as its own thing, but that’s not who Jyn is for much of the movie leading up to that point. It comes out of nowhere in act three. Undoubtedly this is where the [bulk of the reshoots went], because despite the darkest ending of any Star Wars film, Rogue One is oddly hopeful (the original cut must have been some bleak sh*t to require such extensive “fixing”). Sacrifice is necessary, and sometimes heroes don’t make it, but “rebellions are built on hope” and no matter what the odds, a few can defeat many by working together and never giving up. The message of Rogue One is especially poignant right now—you might lose this battle, but the war can still be won. Which makes it SO FRUSTRATING that Rogue One, just like Force Awakens, will come to a grinding halt to acknowledge other Star Wars stuff. Much love to Jimmy Smits, but he’s completely superfluous—we don’t need smirky introductions to Princess Leia, literally one of the most famous film characters ever—and f*cking C-3PO is always shoving his shiny ass into these things to do exactly nothing useful. (Lainey may loathe BB-8’s famewhoring ways, but can we admit that C-3PO is The Worst droid?) And “reviving” Peter Cushing, who has been dead for over two decades, to play Grand Moff Tarkin is F*CKING HORRIFIC. The longer we have to look at Tarkin’s plastic CG-face, the more disturbing it becomes. CG de-aging works in small doses, like the glimpse of Leia, but extended exposure only leads us into the uncanny valley. It would have been much better for Rogue One to give more time and villainy to Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and his sweet space capes. As is, Krennic is totally undercut by Tarkin, reducing him to nothing but a sniveling bureaucrat and a largely pointless character who is only narratively useful in the opening scene. Rogue One has a lot to recommend it. This is a likable bunch of rogues (pun intended), though not quite as instantly lovable as the Force Awakens crew. Characters get short-changed here for action, and that third act shift undoes a lot of what’s compelling about Jyn and Cassian. But it works more than it doesn’t, and the story itself feels fresher than Force Awakens because it [isn’t a repeat of a previous Star Wars movie]. But they’ve got to knock it off with the winks to the older films because they’re hamstringing these movies. Rogue One’s $155 million opening weekend—a huge December number second only to Force Awakens—shows that people are willing to invest in Star Wars and buy into an expansive, multi-narrative cinematic universe. It’s time to let that universe truly expand. (Lainey PS: Diego Luna and Riz Ahmed are SO hot in this movie.) [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 4:00 PM [The Margaret-Tilda emails] [Margaret Cho and Tilda Swinton] [Margaret Cho] has been an outspoken critic of Hollywood’s whitewashing of Asian characters and the industry’s general lack of Asian representation. Margaret starred in the first Asian-American sitcom over 20 years ago. The show lasted a single season. And, sure, it wasn’t great. But, as we’ve seen over and over again, in Hollywood, some stories get a single shot while other stories have the luxury of limitless chances – and failures. Last week Margaret was on the TigerBelly podcast with Bobby Lee and talked about Hollywood’s habit of turning Asian characters into white ones. And then she told Bobby about how [Tilda Swinton] reached out to her earlier this year to discuss the problem. Tilda was cast as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange, a character that was originally Asian. [Per Jezebel]: “She said she didn’t understand why people were so mad about Doctor Strange and she wanted to talk about it, and wanted to get my take on why all the Asian people were mad,” recalls Cho, who said a preliminary email from Swinton led to a long conversation that was “so weird.” “[She] was like, ‘Could you please tell them...’” says Cho. “I’m like, ‘Bitch, I can’t tell them...I don’t have a yellow phone under a cake dome.’” Cho describes their ensuing conversation “kind of a fight about why the part should not have gone to her.” “Basically, it ended with her saying, ‘Well, I’m producing a movie with Steven Yeun starring.” “Oh, like I have a black friend, I can do this...” is how Lee interpreted that. Cho says she ended up feeling like Swinton’s “house Asian...like I’m her servant...like I was following her with an umbrella. I had a weird feeling about the entire exchange, especially the part of, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’” Jezebel reported on this on Friday afternoon, just after 2pm ET. Three hours later they followed with a response from Tilda’s publicist who released, evidently with Tilda’s blessing, the emails that Tilda exchanged with Margaret in May. Have a [close read of those emails here]. What’s clear now about these emails is that both women came away from them feeling differently. Let’s get into those emails now because I’m probably reading them differently than you are. Tilda reaches out to Margaret about the Doctor Strange controversy. They don’t know each other. But Margaret is Asian and she’s been critical of the Doctor Strange casting process so Tilda’s like, let’s talk. Then she asks Margaret to keep it a secret. They go back and forth, in “private”, and while Tilda claims to be more interested in “listening”, she ends up actually doing a lot more explaining and rationalising – about Marvel’s dilemma, about all the “pains” Marvel took to address the dilemma, and, frankly, in the end, there’s not much here to acknowledge Margaret’s position that Asian Americans have been ignored/and or disrespected for so long in entertainment that that frustration is what was at the root of why there was such disappointment in how the Ancient One was handled. In short, it feels, to me, like what Tilda was seeking here was not understanding but rather, as Matthew Dessem writes in Slate, “[some sort of racial absolution]”, with a justification at the end that her next film is with being made with Asians which means she’s not racist. And, really, wasn’t that the whole point of this? To prove that Tilda herself isn’t racist – and not necessarily to address the problem of racial inequality in entertainment? As for Margaret talking on the podcast about their exchange even though she was asked to keep it private and Margaret initially agreed, it’s not impossible to see why she would wonder later, after she’d had some time to process what went down, why it had to be kept a secret in the first place. Is it fair or unfair that Tilda asked to keep it a secret? If they were doing a good thing, if they were both trying to better understand one another, why should it be a secret? As a person of colour myself, what makes me uncomfortable here is the idea of a white woman asking a woman of colour to keep a secret, to keep her silence. What does that say about power? And who holds the power? Does that explain why Margaret, in hindsight, after she’d processed the situation, told Bobby Lee that she felt like Tilda’s “house Asian… like I’m her servant…like I was following her with an umbrella. I had a weird feeling about the entire exchange, especially the part of, ‘Don’t tell anybody’”? And why she decided to not do Tilda’s bidding? To walk away from the “house Asian’s” contract? I’m not keeping your secret. So Tilda dropped the receipts. The immediate reaction was like, OH! Tilda dropped the receipts! Tilda claps back! Cho got [pwned] Team Tilda! We are typically super pro-Tilda here at LaineyGossip but in this case, I’m not sure I can step in her corner. This is not a Kim Kardashian/Taylor Swift situation. And the subject matter here isn’t awesome and petty high school drama either. When Kim Kardashian dropped the receipts on Taylor Swift this past summer, it was a face-off, at the very least, between two evenly matched adversaries. Or, you might say, the reason it was so satisfying was because Taylor, up until then, occupied a higher position on the fame hierarchy than Kim did. Taylor Swift is the girl all the moms approve of. The mean girl who pretends to be the best friend. The prom queen on a pedestal. Kim could only take her down because she was punching UP. Was Tilda Swinton punching up though? Or… was she punching down? Margaret Cho isn’t let into the same rooms Tilda Swinton has access to. [Tilda Swinton went to school WITH PRINCESS DIANA]. So when she writes to Margaret in these emails, describing herself as a “Scottish woman of 55 who lives in the Highlands” and that “there’s precious little projected on contemporary cinema screens that means a great deal to my life”, it’s said from a position of great privilege, the same privilege that has shaped the myopia reflected not only in this exchange but in how Tilda decided to react to Margaret’s characterisation of their exchange. In just three hours, Tilda decided to self-righteously authorise the publication of their messages in defence of herself. Like, HA! GOTCHA! OK, fine. But to what end? How does this move the conversation forward? Tilda Swinton, the Oscar-winner, the fashion icon, so cool, so popular, so edgy, “exposes” Margaret Cho, the Asian-American comic actress who’s crusading for representation and inclusion in Hollywood. And…what has that accomplished? What has been advanced? On Friday night, Margaret responded to Tilda’s release of the emails and issued a statement to [Entertainment Weekly]: “Asian actors should play Asian roles. I believe my emails stand on their own and should be taken for the spirit in which they were intended. I am grateful that the debate has now entered the national discussion and remain a huge fan of Tilda’s.” [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 3:04 PM [December 19, 2016 – Smutty Shout-Outs] [Pedro Pascal for Ashley] Ashley! Happy Birthday and… happy BIRTH day this weekend! Kate tells me you were a total rock star. By request, here are Pedro Pascal, Kit Harington, Tom Hiddleston, and Taika Waititi. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 2:32 PM [Privacy Policy] - [Unsubscribe]