Today, we are seeing the pitfall that the Recording Academy created for themselves with the misguided and insulting Best Asian Pop Music Performance award open up and swallow them because BTS is not interested. All seven members of the band posted to Instagram a statement confirming that they will not be submitting for…

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The biggest pieces of news out of the weekend are that David Jonsson (from Alien: Romulus, The Long Walk, and Industry) will be taking over the Black Panther mantle, starring as T’Challa’s son, Toussaint in Black Panth…

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Dear Gossips,

One of the best things to come out of the popularity of The Odyssey is how obsessed people are with the details, like the filmmaking details. Because this is not an A.I. movie. Practical effects were mostly used, with minimal CGI. Including Circe’s scene…which I call body horror. That shit was so fucked up it will haunt me forever.

But back to Christopher Nolan and the way he continues to make his movies – and what that has meant, even though it might be temporary, to the conversation about letting real people with real skills make real movies. Here’s my favourite tweet about the way Nolan works, I’m still laughing about it.

He probably would. Better to curse the world with evil spirits than with computers, I guess.

But here’s a thing about Nolan that’s much more divisive. And it’s to do with his now increasingly infamous on-set rules. We already heard about how he supposedly bans chairs on his sets and it was Anne Hathaway who started it a few years ago when she said in an interview that he “doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working”. That was subsequently clarified with Nolan’s rep saying that chairs are allowed for resting but they’re not allowed close to the monitors, something like that.

Still, Anne and Matt Damon joked about the chair thing and the other “Nolan Commandments” during The Odyssey press tour just last week, and in addition to chairs, we now have Uggs that are allegedly not welcome on Nolan’s sets. According to Matt, “He hates Uggs! I think they just symbolize leisure in a way he’s not comfortable with.”

So, Gayle King asked Nolan to clarify – what’s his beef with Uggs? This was his response:

I rolled my eyes at the chair thing and I’m rolling my eyes here at the Uggs – and remember, I LOVE this film. But he exclusively works with the most world class actors in the west – are we seriously saying that their performances wouldn’t be the same if their feet were warm in the moments before “action!”? Thank fuck Jared Leto has never been cast in a Christopher Nolan movie because he would take those commandments so far into absurdity we’d have to hear about his broken feet from all the self-inflicted torture he put himself through to stay in character.

If you’re looking for a better Nolan soundbite, I prefer what he has to say about comedy: that in comparison to what he does, he thinks it’s infinitely more challenging.

No lies there. People equate making people laugh with easy – and that applies not only to direction but also acting. The Academy has historically overlooked comedic films, in every applicable category, when it’s definitely just as high of a degree of difficulty, if not more. Take Will Ferrell, for example, since Nolan loves Talladega Nights so much. Will can do drama and comedy. Will can also perform in live sketch and improv and he works in documentary. Therefore, Will Ferrell is better than Leonardo DiCaprio, I said what I said! And Christopher Nolan might agree.

Time for the mailbag…

Question from Christy:

Question re: the questions asked at press junkets. I saw an Odyssey interview where Tom Holland was asked what was Matt Damon’s favorite movie wrap gift. The answer was a shirt from Brad Pitt’s company that Holland gave Damon and then Damon indicated the shirts were “the best” and mentioned the name of the company. Seemed like more of a planned plug than a random question. Do actors supply press junket interviewers with questions?

Lainey’s Answer:

This, I think, is the interview that Christy is referring to.

I have never, at a press junket, been supplied questions. I’ve been told what topics to avoid but I’ve never been given a question to ask. On certain occasions, but not at junkets, I’ve been asked to submit questions in advance for approval, although that hasn’t happened often and most of the time it’s related to a language difference or someone who is not an actor and is doing interviews for the first time and might have some nerves.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen on talk shows, and especially with certain celebrities who have a point they want to make. Here’s an example – last year when Taylor Swift was promoting The Life of a Showgirl she was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I think he was doing some kind of fact checking segment with her and asked her about the Super Bowl and whether or not it was true that she turned down the invitation over performance copyright.

@fallontonight@Taylor Swift addresses rumors that she turned down the Super Bowl Halftime Show 👀 #FallonTonight #TonightShow #TaylorSwift #TaylorOnFallon #SuperBowl

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In my opinion, that was agreed to in advance, that he would put that to her and she’d have the opportunity to address the speculation over why she’s yet to do the halftime show. In my opinion, Taylor isn’t so great of an actor that she could have sold that like it was spontaneous.

Anyway, to go back to that Tom Holland and Matt Damon moment where they did Brad Pitt a solid – if you’re playing a game during a junket, that has to be cleared in advance. Oftentimes there’s a “no games allowed” policy so there is no way that Tom and Matt would have gone into that room cold and not have known in advance that they’d be asked to guess each other’s answers. In a situation like this, I’ve seen it go both ways – sometimes the publicist does share the questions with the talent and other times, as long as they’re happy that there are no offensive or problematic questions, they’ll let the game play out without tipping off the stars.

So, was it a planned plug? I don’t think so. I don’t think Tom and Matt conspired to promote Brad Pitt’s clothing or were asked by Brad Pitt to promote his clothing. I might actually respect it if Brad went to the trouble to get his friend Matt to do this because it would go against his carefully cultivated “I’m so fucking cool” image.

For me, the takeaway here is that Brad has gifted those at the elite levels of Hollywood with his clothing brand, maintaining his popularity status among the most popular people in Hollywood to protect his reputation, so that we don’t pay too much attention to the fact that his kids want nothing to do with him and one by one are removing his name from theirs.

Question from Chris:

I’m curious about the live action Moana and The Rock. Was that movie a flop? I’ve read both that it was and wasn’t. The Rock seems to not do well with movies, right? Or at least lately? I follow him on insta and the presence is definitely toned down vs what it once was, is that sheepishness or strategic? I’m curious about how someone who could be categorized as one of the biggest stars on the planet keeps not making great choices/doing good work. Or (and?) is it that audiences just don’t like the live action remakes? Maybe this is just an overall “WTF, The Rock, what’s going on?” type of question.

Sarah’s answer:

Yes, live-action Moana flopped. It’s currently sitting at $186 million against a rumored $250 million budget, and it is not showing signs of good legs to bail it out. Anyone saying it’s not a bad result is carrying water for Disney and/or The Rock.

I think The Rock just overextended himself. He became too ubiquitous in too many corners, constantly shilling some product—not all of which are bad! Some of them are good, actually! But he looks like a giant shill who will sell literally anything!—and releasing a string of increasingly bad movies. He was trying for the kind of market domination that people will eventually buck against. No one likes a shill, and when you’re not even entertaining anymore, then it’s a two-prong problem.

But not unfixable, and I do think Dwayne Johnson is taking steps to fix it. He has pulled back his online presence, and Moana is the only live-action film he’s released since The Smashing Machine in 2025. He’s got a new Jumanji movie expected later this year, which should help as people actually LIKE those movies and he is good and funny in them, and there is the potentially final Fast/Furious movie, Fast Forever, which is currently slated for 2028. He’s got some other stuff in development, but for now, he’s just got those two movies on his slate for sure.

I think slowing down might go against who Dwayne Johnson is as a person, but professionally, he does need to back off a bit and let the audience breathe. He can be a huge star without choking the pipeline with a new movie every six months, and he can be a businessman without looking like a shill. I’m not sure exactly where the line is, but I do have a sense that people naturally turn away from someone who simply does too much selling, so he just needs to sell a little less and let people remember why we like him.

It also won’t hurt for the movies to be good. A well-received Jumanji movie should go a long way in that department. The Rock’s public persona is not unsalvageable; he just overextended and needs a break to reset. Someone else in that boat is Glen Powell, who has been largely silent recently. Letting people miss you is always a good publicity strategy.

Question from Monika:

What’s the pulse on Timmy after all those nosedive results he’s been hit with ? Yenno France losing in world cup now, and then Marty Supreme losing at the academy awards? It’s just flop after flop for the kid. Should we include him in our “thoughts and prayers” at this point 🤡😂🤡We are worried.

Lainey’s Answer:

Timothée Chalamet is in his villain era right now, so I get it that everyone wants to dunk on him but as much fun as it is to dunk on him, calling it a flop after flop isn’t accurate, I’m sorry. He was in the Knicks locker room like a month ago when they won the NBA championship, and the new trailer for Dune 3 that was released two weeks ago was pretty huge. Trust me when I tell you this, because nobody needs to go into those toxic spaces if they don’t have to, but the film bros have been petting their giant erections over Dune 3 for months. And Sarah has noted that it’s not a given that Avengers: Doomsday will crush Dune 3 when both movies open on the same day in December (Sarah: “Dunesday” is stupid and Marvel is asking for trouble by insisting on it). It’s actually looking pretty close – and it’s an interesting Avengers vs avengers of Hollywood cage match happening here. On one side it’s the ensemble superhero cast but on the other there’s Timmy, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, and Florence Pugh, who’s actually in both.

So, the pulse on Timmy is that in the business, at least, he’s fine. More than fine. When you have a movie like Dune 3 in your back pocket, it’s definitely “fine” over flop. In the public, obviously a different story. He’s certainly not the internet’s boyfriend anymore, social media is still clowning him in some corners. But as I’ve been saying at LaineyGossip for a few months now, I’m not sure that hurts him creatively since his characters lately aren’t meant to be embraced. Paul Atreides in Dune 3 becomes a monster, high on his own supply. It’s more complicated than that but my point is that there may not be much of a disconnect between Timmy’s public reputation and the huge role he has coming up in one of the hugest movies of the year. And that might actually work in his favour.

Question from Margaret:

Sarah - great piece about Netflix’s sudden drop in stock value and the strategy of “audience capture” and milking the customer by making fewer shows but charging more (read here). This really resonated with me. Your thoughts?

Sarah’s answer:

This seems related to Netflix’s “second season problem”, their audience capture kind of sucks, which is what Margaret’s linked article by Ted Gioia is getting at—Netflix’s latest earnings report was “weaker than expected” and the stock market dipped over 10% on that news alone. Hey! Here’s an idea! Let’s not base our entire economy on corporate gambling!

Anyway, my thoughts continue to be that I am not a Business Genius, but the problem facing Netflix, and any subscription-based model including cable TV, was always obvious even to non-geniuses, and that is that there are 1) only so many people interested in your product and 2) only so many people who can afford your product. On balance, you want group 1 to be bigger than group 2. HBO mastered massaging interest vs affordability for decades.

HBO built its reputation on “it’s not TV, it’s HBO”, by delivering a premium entertainment experience for a higher cost, but one so tastefully curated and with such great quality control that people felt the splurge of HBO was worth it. Then, they could capture people from group 2 with limited discount drives and hope they convinced those group 2 folks to stay on board when their rates went up because of the quality of their shows.

The problem with the “line go up” mentality, a stock-oriented philosophy we have seen out of Netflix, and basically every other streamer except Apple TV+ which is operating on that old premium HBO model, is that you will eventually tip the scales in the direction of group 2—your subscription becomes too expensive and too many people cannot afford it. For the record, I am like a decade deep into telling people I don’t see how Netflix doesn’t end up costing $50+ per month, because they clearly tapped out their subscription market years ago and the only way for “line go up” to continue is through price hikes.

With subscriptions slowing as group 2 is tapped out, Netflix and other streamers introduced limited ads, tiered pricing, yadda yadda, and at the same time Netflix, specifically, went on a slashing spree, cancelling shows and destroying audience trust. That means you’re pricing out group 2 while also winnowing away group 1, and now Netflix is in a position to ding everyone’s retirement funds because they can’t retain subscribers that they don’t seem to value in any meaningful way.

My thought is the obvious solution is to look at the old HBO model and balance quality with cost, raising interest while trying to keep group 2 from becoming too large. That might mean producing fewer shows and movies, yes, because part of that equation will be keeping operating costs down, but it will also mean allowing shows to grow audiences over time, and not making subscribers feel like a wet towel to be squeezed dry.

Question from JPH:

Lainey, how was the [BTS] concert?? Tell us all about it!

Lainey’s Answer:

I want to tell you all about it but I’m still processing it, I don’t think I can coherently talk about it yet! It’s been a week and I’m still overstimulated. So, my plan is to write more about the experience after the Toronto shows that are happening the third week of August. Hope that’s OK.

What I can share here, though, is a bit about being with ARMY on that kind of scale in one space with OT7. It was probably the most diverse show I’ve ever been to – and I knew it, intellectually, that BTS’s fans aren’t just one demographic but seeing it in person, all genders, all ethnicities, seeing children and seniors, and not just one or two here and there but so many seemingly disparate groups populating Stade de France, united by love for these seven artists, was the purest most euphoric experience. And then hearing all of them singing in Korean, screaming in Korean, every word to every song, was a fucking trip.

My other takeaway is…what’s the opposite of lonely? A BTS concert is the most UNLONELY space. There were SO many people there who came with a single ticket – we met them on the subway, in the queue for the bathroom, for food, everywhere we went there were people who were there on their own (my friend Hannah is a journalist who can never stop the journalism so she was out here just talking to everyone, that’s how I know this) and who didn’t feel a way about it. They were there without fear, without insecurity, just excitement, and…I know this sounds corny but…the knowledge that they won’t truly be alone, that they aren’t walking in alone. Because BTS will be with them. Sob!

But this is what I saw that night from the stage to the crowd – somehow in that huge stadium, filled with 88,000 people (92,000 on night two), BTS fulfilled a promise that if you come to see them, they will find a way to connect to each and every person there. Jacek is probably either rolling his eyes or screaming with laughter reading this because he is endlessly amused by my obsession with RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook but for me, their magic is real (Jacek: I am not, in fact, but I did call them ‘40+ teenagers’ when Lainey was sending me giddy updates from France). I saw it! I felt it! It’s still vibrating through me. And I’m sorry I’m not capable of putting together more thoughts but I’m still working through this extraordinary thing that I was a part of that, right now, feels bigger than words.

That’s a great thing to aspire to: to build a community that is so welcoming and kind and unlonely. Hopefully we can do this here at The Squawk, and we thank those of you who put in the effort every day in the chats.

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey and Sarah

Here’s where we normally embed our “Subscribe” button reminding you that this and LaineyGossip are reader-supported publications but the button is crashing the page today. So… If you’re on a free subscription and enjoy this column, please consider a paid one. We know folks are juggling so many subscriptions out there but we really couldn’t do what we do without the paid support of our paying Squawk subscribers (literally!). LaineyGossip ads don’t cover it. So if you want to jump on board, subscribe!

PS…one more admin note. Substack has been acting up over the last few days when accessing it via web. Chat threads are producing errors and someone just emailed about crashes while trying to log in. If you’ve had any issues and tend to use the web to access chats or the Squawk home page, please try clearing your cache and restart your browser. The app seems fine. In the meantime I have an open ticket with Substack. - Jacek

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Dear Squawkers,

I mentioned in my site intro yesterday that the success of Obsession and Backrooms, both films from filmmakers who got their start posting videos on Youtube, is driving Hollywood into a buying spree, locking down rights to internet memes like Siren Head and giving production deals to Youtubers—Kevin Cate garnered a six-figure deal to develop his online short film, Open Door, into a feature film.

While I have misgivings about feature-length films coming from internet memes—Siren Head is just a spooky photoshop, like Slenderman was just a spooky photoshop, there’s no actual STORY, and Backrooms does show the challenge of turning a meme into a feature, as that film buckles in the final act under the weight of turning vague lore into a conclusive narrative—I am also interested in how we refer to this new cohort of filmmakers. They are universally being referred to in the media as “Youtubers”, even though Curry Barker says he “never thought of [him]self as a Youtuber”.

Some might see this as Barker, who did post short films on Youtube, as realigning himself with the Hollywood establishment, but I think it is more nuanced than that. Sixty years ago, Steven Spielberg made films in his childhood using 8mm and super eight film, as that was the technology available to him at the time. Quentin Tarantino shot his early “learning” films on 16mm. In the Eighties and Nineties, many amateur filmmakers shot films directly onto VHS. In the early 2000s, filmmakers like The Lonely Island, a comedy group that produced directors Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, posted short films online in the days before Youtube.

The technology to make and share films is constantly evolving, and over the last thirty years it has moved online, so that filmmakers are sharing their work on platforms like Youtube and Vimeo. Are they then Youtubers? Thanks to the reputation for exploitation and the snake oil salesmanship of some online personas, the abuses of family vloggers, Mr. Beast’s haunting lack of any detectable personality, etc, “Youtuber” has a negative connotation, but Youtubers can also be informative, entertaining, and interesting, like Mina Le, Drew Gooden, or any channel significantly devoted to making in-depth documentaries about maritime disasters (my personal favorites).

I just don’t know if labelling a filmmaker like Curry Barker a Youtuber is telling the whole story. Because we are only at the beginning of Gen Z filmmakers emerging in mainstream space, and a lot of them ARE going to come from platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, and TikTok, because that is the technology available to them to share their work. I am leery of reducing them to “content creator” because I think calling films and TV shows “content” is reductive and is used deliberately by executives to reduce the value of filmmaking as creative endeavor. Calling everything “content” has been bad for the film industry.

I’m just a little worried that dubbing emerging filmmakers who post online “Youtuber” is a bit reductive and somewhat like calling films “content”. Curry Barker wasn’t posting videos on Youtube trying to be the next Mr. Beast. He was trying to get someone to notice his short films. Do we need a new term? Or will enough people parse the difference between an actual Youtuber, someone whose creative career exists within the bounds of that platform, and a filmmaker using Youtube as an outlet for self-distribution?

Onto the mailbag!

Question from Kristin:

Apparently two of the Emmy nominees for Guest Star Drama self-submitted for nominations (The Pitt). How does a show make a determination on who to submit? Is the process very different for self-submitters? Is it considered a snub from the network if they don’t submit you?

Sarah’s answer:

The networks/streamers and show creators decide who gets submitted and in what category for the Emmys—the people behind The Bear could have decided to submit as a drama at any time and never did—and on a show with a huge ensemble like The Pitt, that’s not always simple. Last year it was obvious they should support Shawn Hatosy, who had a mid-life breakout moment as Dr. Abbot. (This year, Hatosy was submitted as a full-on supporting actor, and did receive a nomination in that category.)

This year, The Pitt received multiple nominations for guest acting, but two actors, Brittany Allen (terminally ill mother Roxie) and Jeff Kober (Dr. Robby’s buddy Duke), had to self-submit as HBO didn’t submit for them. This means they had to choose and package their “clips”, the selected scenes from specific episodes to be considered for nomination and pay the entry fees (a few hundred dollars, more or less depending on number of producers, category, and other factors) to the television academy out of pocket. The process is not different for self-submitters, they just have to, well, do it themselves.

In the case of a show like The Pitt, it is a strategic decision, who to submit and campaign. The Pitt could fill all the acting categories, there are so many terrific performances, but then you’re cannibalizing your own odds. Shawn Hatosy, for instance, is nominated alongside Gerran Howell (Whitaker) and Patrick Ball (Langdon). They’re splitting Pitt votes three ways. So, the network could decide to back one person for a category, to ensure they do not reduce their own chances of winning in that category. We see similar logic at play at the Oscars, where an actor might get submitted in a supporting category so as not to detract from someone else’s leading campaign.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a snub for the network not to submit every actor from the show, but in the specific case of Brittany Allen, I do think it’s weird HBO didn’t submit her, because her performance as Roxie was so memorable. I’m glad she and Jeff Kober were rewarded for rolling the dice on themselves. (Kober is also nominated at the Daytime Emmys for his role as Cyrus Renault on General Hospital, an award he previously won in 2022.)

Question From kaybee:

I have a question relating to the value of a stylist like Law Roach to an actress like Zendaya. The looks from their iconic partnership could fill several coffee table books by now and I’m not sure that she’s even 30 yet (gasp!). It is wild to me that this week, during the global premiere of The Odyssey, starring several Oscar winners (and massive stars across the board), she is like 10th billing and maybe in like 10 minutes of the film (hearsay) and it seems she is the one generating most of the headlines for the movie for her fashion alone, not releasing her So Kates from our necks from one junket to the next! So how is this, in an attention-economy, viewed by both producers to sign her to their next project, and would someone like Law charge more than a traditional stylist (or image architect) knowing that he is ultimately driving interest in her projects, too?

Lainey’s Answer:

Zendaya is turning 30 in about six weeks and you’re right, she’s still young and already what she and Law Roach have achieved with their looks could be their own Met Gala. And if the Met Gala is still around in 25 years, there will be a Met Gala themed around the Zendaya-Law Roach partnership. Or maybe that would be too intimidating, asking people to come to an event “inspired by” the now iconic catalogue of pieces she’s worn over the last decade or so.

Anyway…your question is about her wardrobe, the anticipation generated by her promotional outfits, and the fees involved and the impact that might have on her next projects…

Starting with Law Roach and what he charges – even pre-COVID, like maybe around the time he was styling Celine Dion at Paris Fashion Week, his rate was high, among the highest – and it’s likely even higher now, presumably covered (at least some of it) by the studio as negotiated into Zendaya’s contract. That’s now probably standard for many of the most fashionable stars, to have their glam built into the deal, which of course includes the press phase of it but might also include filming, if a certain actor or actress, for instance, has a preferred hair and makeup artist. My guess with Zendaya and Law, at this point, is that his involvement is understood, and I can’t imagine any studio or streamer (if she ever does another series) fighting them on it at this point.

Whether or not the clothes and how she looks in them opens up more acting opportunities, her screentime in The Odyssey, it is indeed short. Same goes for Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong’o – all three of them equal out, I think. Robert Pattinson has slightly more screentime but not by much. If they’re not Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, they’re in the movie the same amount as Zendaya; maybe Himesh Patel gets a bit more, because all of his scenes are basically with MD. But yes, the amount of attention she’s getting, it’s like she’s one of the leads, not unlike how it was in the first Dune movie when she was such a huge part of the press tour and she was in it for like seven minutes.

But as impactful as Zendaya is to a marketing campaign, I don’t know that it’s the primary reason she’s cast in any given project. She is, after all, a two-time Emmy winner. She brings a lot more to a role than just the clothes. And in The Odyssey specifically, Nolan wanted her and only her as Athena and even though it’s a small role, as I mentioned earlier this week, what she does with it is a gut punch, in a scene that is a gut punch, maybe the most gut punch scene in a film full of gut punch scenes. And it’s critical to understanding Odysseus’s self-reckoning. There’s a closeup of her face in that scene and the way Nolan cuts to it lands in the most devastating way, driving home why he wanted her in his film.

This, for other producers and people in the industry, would be even more valuable than her red carpet superpowers. To have it shared over and over again on this press tour that Christopher Nolan envisioned her and entrusted her in such a critical scene. And once you’ve been in a Nolan film, if you get shit done for him, there’s a good chance you’re coming back. This is Matt and Annie’s third Nolan project. Robert Pattinson’s second. Second also for Elliot Page and Himesh Patel. Cillian Murphy isn’t in this, but we all know by now how he shows up for Nolan (and has been rewarded for it). Being a member of the Christopher Nolan Company is bragging rights.

Question from Kathy K:

How in the world (pun intended) are they going to fit all the announced musical performers into the 11 minutes allowed for the music during the World Cup halftime show?! Are they all going to perform one song and each have a verse or two?

Lainey’s Answer:

Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Justin Bieber are the headliners. Burna Boy has also been confirmed, plus the PS22 Chorus, Coldplay, and the Muppets. And just this week the New York Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela were added to the list. Also, apparently Tom Cruise is involved in the closing ceremony before the start of the match…WHAT?!

FIFA is doing the most (and not enough in the more important ways) for this final and the approach seems to be more is more which, I mean, no offence to America but it’s kinda fitting for where this is happening. So, thematically at least, it kinda works. How it will work in 11 minutes – I guess it’ll be a light lift for most of the artists?

We probably already know at least three songs on the list. Madonna and Feid’s “Read My Lips” is on the official FIFA World Cup 2026 soundtrack. And BTS and Coldplay have a song together, “My Universe”, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 at the time of its release and is for sure on message with this occasion. Shakira and Burna Boy’s “Dai Dai” is the tournament’s official song, wouldn’t surprise me if this closed out the performance with all artists on stage.

Let’s say those three songs time out at between 90 seconds to two minutes. Then it’s the NYC Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela with another 90 seconds to two minutes, in the middle section of the show, performing in tribute to Venezuela. That leaves us with around-ish four or five minutes for solos from the headliners and I have no idea what Justin will do with his solo, which will max at two minutes.

What would happen if he brings out Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee for “Despacito”? I’m not sure this is possible (it probably isn’t) but that’s my Gossip Genie wish for JB on Sunday. Or JB and the Muppets teaching people the meaning of “Sorry”? I still don’t understand how the Muppets will be involved! But seriously, this show will move so fast, it’s not going to be a showcase really for any one artist. And I actually can’t wait to see how they produce it, because no producer is going into this hoping for a rushed show – the challenge is to fit all of these artists in but pace it in a way that isn’t just a blur. For the work nerds among us, the biggest takeaway from this show will be the work porn.

Question from Jessica:

As a person who’s not paying close attention, it seems like most movies earn less at the box office these days than they cost to produce. Does that mean that movie studios are regularly losing money? The executives seem to make millions no matter what, so how are studios balancing their books?

Sarah’s answer:

“How are Hollywood studios balancing their books”, a mystery for the ages. Literally not a joke, there have been questions about Hollywood accounting as long as there has been a Hollywood. But specifically, to your question, Jessica, Hollywood works a lot like publishing. In the publishing world, popular genres like romance and mystery are relatively cheap to publish yet make a ton of money, supporting other, riskier endeavors like literary fiction, where the financial gains can be significantly smaller. (Not for nothing, the publishing industry is a mess, too.)

In Hollywood, blockbusters are supposed to support the riskier projects, it’s just that over the last thirty years, studios stopped taking risks. But a decent-looking slate would include a few big movies, in the hopes one of them will hit the jackpot, a batch of a dozen or so films budgeted in the mid-range of $40-80 million—this is where rom-coms and comedies used to live—and then a handful of risks, like films from emerging talents, or festival acquisitions. This is what I was talking about in my site intro yesterday, that you would spread your slate around, films of different sizes, different genres, appealing to cross-sections of audiences, not throwing all your eggs into the basket of one or two mega-budgeted blockbusters.

What has been driving me insane for the last few years, and what we do not have a clear answer to and probably never will, is that out of one side of their mouths, the studio bosses tell us how terrible everything is, how bad the box office is/was, how they’re struggling so hard, they can’t afford to pay the people who actually make movies. But out of the other side of their mouths, they are somehow justifying tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in bonuses and stock options. The math is not mathing! Your studio is either making enough money for that golden CEO payday, or it isn’t! It can’t be both!

Yet it is, somehow, both. Do I suspect something nefarious? Of course, have you met me? At the very least, studios are sucking their rank-and-file employees and the production workers dry. They’re stagnating wages, eliminating jobs, and cutting benefits while their own pay goes up, up, up. At the most? Fucking money laundering, allegedly, it’s just one idea I have to explain what the fuck is going on. But yeah, something isn’t adding up, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

On that note, thank you for squawking with us! See you on the other side of the World Cup, and stay frosty!

Just keep squawking,

Sarah and Lainey

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Dear Squawkers,

I want to talk about Taylor Swift…but not about Taylor’s wedding. Even though it’s not wedding-related, it’s still gossipy. About the Emmys.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show (that is too many colons in a title, sorry), available on Disney+, has been nominated for five Emmys, including Outstanding Variety Show (pre-recorded), and she’s a credited producer. Usually, this category is presented at the Creative Arts Emmys the week before the big Emmy show broadcast a week later on Monday 14 September. The Television Academy, of course, would love to get Taylor there but considering that September 14 is also Kansas City’s regular season home opener (clever scheduling by the NFL for the first Monday Night Football of the season), they might have a better chance of Taylor showing up at the Creative Arts Emmys and not the main show. Although…since one of her good friends, Mariska Hargitay, is hosting the Emmys this year, there might be slightly more incentive for her to go as a presenter…

Which would set up an interesting classic “red carpet run-in” scenario that is always good for gossip. Because Sarah Pidgeon is also nominated in the lead actress limited series category for her performance in Love Story. (She’d be a favourite to win here if not for Sally Field in Remarkably Bright Creatures.) Sarah, as we all know by now, is currently dating Joe Alwyn. Joe Alwyn was not in the habit of walking award show carpets with Taylor when they were together but then again, especially lately, he’s moving differently with Sarah. So, you know, it’s not impossible for him to join her…

Like I said, though, Emmy night is also when Travis Kelce kicks off what is likely his final season and I can’t imagine the newlywed bride wouldn’t want to be there.

While we’re here though, let’s talk about Taylor’s award ambitions beyond the Emmys. Is there an entertainment equivalent of a grand slam? Like in tennis and golf? That would be the EGOT, right? But the EGOT, as we know it, is when an artist wins the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony over the course of their entire career, not limited to an (one) award season. If we start the award season calendar with the Emmys, which is how the EGOT order is listed, then an entertainment grand slam could be Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony…

And Taylor could actually go for a slam this season. We just talked about her Emmy chances. The Life of a Showgirl for sure will pick up some Grammy nominations and we already know she has an excellent track record with the Recording Academy. We also know that at the Oscars she’ll be contending with “I Knew It, I Knew You” from the Toy Story 5 soundtrack. She just needs something at the Tonys.

What are the chances that she’ll be able to put together something for Broadway, or get a producer credit, before April 2027? If there’s anyone who could and would, it’s her. If we know anything about Taylor Swift, it’s that she will always find another mountain to brand her initials into.

Now the mailbag…

Question from Amy B from the Prince Harry thread:

I’m going to harp again on the statement in The Guardian - before the verdict - that one reason that Harry couldn’t sleep over at Pa’s house was because of “fears the king would be put in an awkward position” with the verdict.

What would be awkward?

If Harry won, the king wouldn’t be able to publicly support him since he (Charles) is beholden to the media? Or that the media (or Daily Mail) would have some backlash against Harry and Charles wouldn’t be able to stand up for him (ha!)?

Or that his father would have to face his son that he chose and continues to choose his media image over him?

Lainey’s Answer:

This was probably rhetorical…what would be awkward? Because of all the points you cited. But I love what you’re bumping up against, this specific paragraph in that article:

“But if that all looked like a bit of an unedifying mess, what really upset Harry’s team was the suggestion the invitation had been withdrawn over fears the king would be put in an awkward position when a high court judge rules in a case involving his youngest son on Tuesday.”

So they told on themselves. His kingness told on himself. And I wonder if it was inadvertent – since these people so regularly show their decrepit asses when it comes to public relations. Because I think that they thought it’d make King Charles look good, like he’s so impartial, so neutral, a paragon of fairness. And, sure, that’d be the case if, say, his son was being investigated for some kind of criminal activity, if this was that kind of legal issue. But as I wrote the other day, in this situation, it’s his own son on one side and the fucking media mafia on the other. His Majesty is not coming out looking like a paragon of anything except cruel parenting.

That said…

If we’re talking about neutrality and impartiality, maybe we should be talking about how the royal institution FOR TWO DECADES harboured a member of the family with serious ties to a convicted sex offender who exploited minors and was accused of sex trafficking. And who himself was accused of sexual assault by a victim whose pain resulted in her tragic death.

So are we seriously calling it “an awkward position”, a MORE AWKWARD POSITION, to have your son sleep over just because he’s suing the tabloids for invading his privacy, harassing his wife, and fomenting racial animosity against his partner and child than to have an actual pervert sitting next to you in church?!!????????????????????

We should all be yelling at this bullshit, the fucked up way these fuckass royals decide what’s proper and what’s not. Also, while we’re here, can we get an update on that sleazy piece of shit, Just Andrew? Just last month it was reported that he’s being investigated for even more mess, including allegations that he “behaved inappropriately” at a horse show back in 2002.

WHAT COULD BE MORE AWKWARD THAN THAT?!

Question from Margaret:

Lainey noted in a post that there are some celebrities who the site gives less attention to (e.g. not providing a movie review) when the team deems the person to have crossed a moral line. I would like to hear more about how you decide to cover a celebrity less and what that practically means. And will you share some examples? I can’t stand Tom Cruise because of Scientology, and I don’t watch his movies anymore, but I admit I still click on Tom Cruise stories. Hmm. I may have some thinking to do!

Sarah’s answer:

I admit, my system is irregular and probably hypocritical. For instance, we try to skip Brad Pitt when we can. Personally, I believe he did everything detailed in the FBI reports, and his whole public persona these days is centered on blaming his ex-wife for parental alienation (which is currently not diagnosable), and what I believe to be financial abuse of Angelina Jolie via the court system. Fuck Brad Pitt, basically.

That said, I am very curious about The Adventures of Cliff Booth. For Pitt? No. I’m just so curious to see David Fincher direct a Quentin Tarantino script. One of the most coldly precise directors working off a script by one of the most verbosely maximalist writers? I am intrigued! But, ugh, I have to get through the Pitt of it all. Still haven’t decided what I’m going to do with that.

And I feel you, Margaret, on Tom Cruise. We can laugh about Xenu all day, but at the end of it, Scientology does harm people. Cruise is a lot more toned down on his public support, though, which is why I can kind of squint and push the Xenu of it all to the side of the frame. I don’t ignore it; I just think he makes it less of my problem than he did 20 years ago. This is the hypocrisy in the system!

I firmly believe we all draw the art vs artist line for ourselves, and that line can shift over time. My line is mostly whether or not someone is using their platform to do harm. I can’t fuck with JK Rowling at all anymore, because she openly boasts about using her Harry Potter money to fund anti-trans hate campaigns in the UK, which have been successful in narrowing, if not outright stripping, human rights from our trans brothers and sisters. I can’t put money in her pocket knowing what she’s doing with it.

Practically, that means not covering the upcoming HBO series reboot of Harry Potter, but at the same time, I know I will 100% watch and review Digger and keep tabs on a potential Tom Cruise Oscar run. But for The Adventures of Cliff Booth, maybe I’ll just watch it and not review it. I’m still engaging with it, Netflix will still get my data and viewing minutes, but maybe I won’t promote the show. Maybe I’ll just recommend Widow’s Bay again and point out that Matthew Rhys is, as far as we know, an unproblematic king. The worst thing he’s done that we know about is buy a boat his family hates (a very Tom Loftis thing to do).

I’m not claiming any moral high ground here. Like I said, my system is imperfect and selfish in design. But I can at least try not to put money in the pockets of bigots.

Question from Caitlin:

Not sure if LaineyGossip and Sarah are allowed to answer this, but how much nudity is in [The Odyssey]? We are generally okay with our 14 year old seeing certain R rated stuff, but we also try to keep the sex and nudity to a minimum. Using Oppenheimer as a baseline, would you say there is more, less, or the same amount of sex/nudity? I don’t necessarily mind if the characters are having sex, it’s really if there is a lot of nudity. I could wait until the film comes out and watch it first but he’s going to camp a few days after it comes out, and I wanted to take him beforehand if I can.

Lainey’s Answer:

Using Oppenheimer as a baseline, as far as I can remember, there is way less sex/nudity in The Odyssey. In fact, I’m not sure there is even any nudity or sex for that matter. Greek stories are horny, often disturbingly so, and I know some people still have lingering ick over the sex parts in Oppenheimer but there’s none of that energy in The Odyssey, even though Odysseus obviously had his opportunities. This clearly wasn’t Christopher Nolan’s vision for the story – and that might be an interesting question to ask him, whether or not the reaction to the sex scenes in Oppenheimer had an impact on how he approached Odysseus’s various detours. Having seen the film and what his focus is, I personally don’t think that it was a deliberate choice. And, frankly, with Nolan’s artistic ego (and of course he has one, given his status at this point), I’ll never be convinced that he’d be swayed by audience opinion anyway.

That said, while you may not need to be concerned about graphic sex and nudity, the film is graphic in other ways – it’s the opposite of horny in parts, it’s actually horror. This shouldn’t be a spoiler being that the text is, like 2,500 years old. The Odyssey is an odyssey, and Odysseus’s experiences are traumatic. Remember, the ancient Greeks were twisted, LOL.

Question from Maggie:

Given Lainey’s early comments on The Odyssey, I’m assuming it will be a big factor at the Oscars. With the huge and stacked cast, what are your predictions for nominations?

Sarah’s answer:

I see The Odyssey on Monday, so I’m not sure about the acting stuff yet—though out of all of Anne Hathaway’s films this year, this one seems the most likely to support a strong Oscar push—but without even seeing it I can tell you The Odyssey will be up and down the technical and craft categories. Ludwig Göransson composed the score, he’s almost an automatic nomination at this point (and deservedly so, the man is a legit musical genius). He already has THREE Oscars, including one for Oppenheimer. He’s as close to a sure thing as I will commit to at this point.

Hoyte van Hoytema is the cinematographer, both of his Oscar nominations are from Nolan films, and he won for Oppenheimer. Editor Jennifer Lame also won an Oscar for Oppenheimer, she could contend for The Odyssey, too, but if she does, it becomes an automatic Best Picture contender, too. Editing and Best Picture go hand in hand.

It’s a war movie, so put it down for sound, almost certainly—even though Nolan’s soundscapes are AWFUL, they’re still loud, which is usually what ends up winning sound Oscars—and stunts, probably. And it’s a period piece and a fantasy, so visual effects, costumes, production design, hair and makeup are all in play. And it’s a huge ensemble with every famous person in Hollywood, so mark it for a casting nomination, too.

With 25 categories in 2027, The Odyssey is already a top competitor in ten categories, easy, before we even get into acting, directing, etc. But I fully expect support for Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon, and Nolan can never be counted out as a writer or director. The Odyssey could easily end up with around 15 nominations, maybe even 16, tying Sinners’ record for most nominations of all time. But you know who will be right there with them? Denis Villeneuve and Dune: Part Three. That movie will really have to shit the bed to mess up a massive nomination haul.

Question from Jenn H:

Simple style question: what are Lainey’s favourite hairstyles to wear under a ballcap? Preferably ones that don’t leave your hair flat on top (if that’s even possible.)

Lainey’s Answer:

I think I might be an unhelpful asshole here because I like my hair flat – and sometimes I use my ballcap in the morning to pre-style the front of my hair so that my layers lie just right against my face. But that’s generally how I like to wear a cap, with hair framing both sides. When I golf, it’s always in two braids, but not tight braids, it looks better on me with a little hair coming out. This TikTok is pretty much my golf hairstyle, I just don’t get that fancy with looping and tucking the braid over and over.

@_lilyisI hope this helps! #kbeautyblogger #koreablogger #kbeautytiktok #koreanhairstyles #kbeautyhair #kpopstyle #kbeauty #kbeautyhack #fypシ

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In my opinion, Asian TikTok is the best for hair inspo. And there’s a whole subcategory on TikTok for ballcap hairstyles.

Here’s another one really good one with a couple of hairstyles I’ve worn with a ballcap for dog walks and weekends.

@choichoi0530Makes Your Face Look Smaller and Looks Great in Photos! Baseball Cap Hairstyle 🧢 #HairstyleTutorial #HatHairstyles #southeastasia #foryou #LazyGirlHairstyles

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And here’s one of the most popular ones – the final style that she does at the end is great for shape but also keeping the hair off your neck.

@emeristudiooHairstyle Ideas with Cap 🧢 #longhairstyles #hairsyleideas #hairstyletutorial #hair #hairstyle #gayarambut #dailyhairstyles #hairtok #fyp #fypシ #blowthisup

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Thank you for your questions and for your comments in the chats and for your patience while our team has been navigating some heavy workloads and deadlines the last few weeks. Also, personally, I apologise in advance because I’m a week away from fulfilling a lifelong dream, OMG OMG OMG I can’t even talk about it but I know I’ll definitely be insufferable. Borahae!

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey and Sarah

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Dear Gossips,

I interviewed an underappreciated legend this week: Erica Kane aka THE Susan Lucci. Is that an oxymoron? How can a legend be underappreciated? She can if she comes from soap operas. I mean, even within her own artform she was Emmy-rejected how many times?

Susan Lucci was on All My Children for 41 (FORTY-ONE) years! Like, the entire time it was on the air. We are never going to see that happen again – not on any television show, and probably not with any actor in any one role. But the fact that it was on a soap opera, that’s in part where the underappreciation is happening because most people simply don’t understand the grind of American soap opera work, how hard it is, how much more endurance soap opera actors have over their other television and film counterparts. It’s not just that they film continuously – for decades, before cord-cutting and streaming took over, they worked through the summer, no hiatus, only short breaks for holidays and maybe big events like the Olympics – it’s what they film continuously: pages and pages of dialogue.

For comparison, on average, when it’s a movie, they shoot five pages of script per day. On primetime, on average, it’s between five and ten pages a day and the industry standard is that one episode is filmed over eight days. This may vary depending on the series – like Pluribus – but if it does, it’s almost always longer, not shorter.

On a soap opera? They go through at least 50 PAGES A DAY, on the low side! And if you’ve ever watched a soap opera, you know they’re not doing elaborate action sequences; it’s a lot of three-quarter or waist-up shots, and close-ups – all they do is talk! And sometimes slap each other. So, imagine the memorisation required, Every Single Day.

Susan Lucci did that for 41 years. In a genre that is not considered prestige, which is also why she’s underappreciated, since daytime TV has never been as revered as film or primetime TV.

On top of that, Susan would sometimes for funsies do a Broadway show while also continuing with All My Children. We talked about that during the interview – how she was committed on Broadway when she was also filming Erica’s scenes with her daughter Bianca, the first lesbian character on American daytime television. The conversation was about how those scenes required extra scheduling because of the sensitivity of the storyline, and that it was tricky to schedule because her time was so tight doing both shows.

So, just to reiterate, Susan Lucci was doing all that acting and memorisation on All My Children and also EIGHT shows a week on Broadway! She’s not just underappreciated, she’s underrated. And when she came in our building the other day, it truly was a visit from a queen in the business, a total fucking pro. No fuss, on point the whole day as she made it through an intense media carwash, not a hint of a slouch, never an exhale or a faltering smile. By the way, she’s 79 years old. And still a babe.

Because of the discipline required, and the rigorous workload, soap operas are an excellent training ground for young actors. This is why Michael B. Jordan, often unprompted, talks about how vital being on All My Children was for his career. I asked Susan about this, about all the stars who’ve come through the soap opera Hogwarts and she remembered MBJ for how well he met expectations, how quickly he understood that he was to be punctual and prepared, since that train is leaving the station whether you’re ready or not, and if you want to look like an asshole when the episode airs, and it affects your career, go ahead, but you’re the one who’ll have to eat it.

All these years later, even during his Oscar campaign, MBJ made sure to get the message across that he’s been through the program, that he picked up on the basics from the experts in daytime. And that, on top of adding to his skillsets and respect for the ensemble, being on AMC also exposed him to an influential audience. Studio executives and other industry players would tell him that their mothers, fathers, wives, aunts, uncles, daughters, and nephews knew him from daytime – and that it was an advantage.

This is not unlike Mariska Hargitay and Jalen Brunson. He was watching her from when he was a kid, with his family, multiple generations in the audience bonded together over Olivia Benson’s integrity and courage. And that’s why she’s his #1 celebrity. The same is true, for sure, in Susan Lucci’s case. You can’t be on television for over 40 years and not take up space in people’s memories, from right inside their homes. They don’t make them like her anymore.

Let’s get to the mail…

First up, a question and then a related comment.

Question from Betts:

How do you handle a problem like Gwynocide at the Squawk? She’s been a frequent flyer at LaineyGossip for a long time, but it’s been getting increasingly hard to cover her without getting the grime of her snake oil all over the place. Editorially, when do you cut your coverage?

Comment from Monika T:

Piggy backing 🐖off this question, isn’t the short answer…never? Entertainment analysis and news always covers even the disgusting topics like homophobia, controversy, tone-deafness and ofc all the positive news as well. That’s like asking Lainey to stop covering Sydney Sweeney after the AE Ad. Like sure it’s disgusting, but the disgust is an opportunity for Lainey Gossip to write about it as a learning lesson on how NOT to be OR at least gives us a playbook on what led to the demise of a celebrity, and how their star power dims out after their financial demise or potential demise. We are always drawn to these types of stories. If we weren’t, the David and Goliath story wouldn’t have been popular, and um here we are, time after time these stories continue to be written whether it be Gwyneth, Sydney etc. If Gwyneth wasn’t covered, wouldn’t Lainey Gossip have to avoid covering all other celebrities as well? She isn’t the only problem child in Hollywood. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Idk if lainey gossip is in the business to baby proof her words or omit content for us. Gwynocide is just part of the story.

Lainey’s Answer:

I think you’re both right. It’s true what Monika is saying in that we try to tease out the bigger social implications out of a celebrity story so I don’t know if we can put an indefinite pause on Gwyneth Paltrow coverage. But you’re right, Betts, when you refer to the snake oil and the grime, because Gwyneth is more of an entrepreneur now than she is an actor. She delivered a strong performance in Marty Supreme recently but since then she’s pretty much gone straight back to being a tone-deaf asshole and any talk of her, even if it’s disparaging, only gives more shine to whatever bullshit she’s selling. You could argue that the Kardashian-Jenners fall into the same category and, well, look how that turned out.

The comparison doesn’t end there. The Kardashian-Jenners and Gwyneth are kinda like Trump in that way with their flood-the-zone approach; it’s controversy after controversy, mess after mess, and they all seem to benefit from it because of the distraction and the short attention spans; plus they all seem impervious to scandal. Is this the one that brings Gwyneth down? Honestly, I doubt it. Remember a few weeks ago when I was raging about the white women selling those fuckass mahjong sets? Business hasn’t slowed down for them, and there’s a lot of consumer crossover between those people and Goop. They both appeal to a demographic that simply doesn’t care.

To go back to what to report and the choices we have made and the ones we could make going forward, not sure if you noticed but Sarah and I made a choice about a big movie last summer, intentionally avoiding most, though not all, of the press tour. We couldn’t entirely ignore it, but for a movie of its size, our coverage was rather minimal. We’ve done that with a couple of blockbusters over the last few years.

Gwyneth isn’t a movie, she’s a person, a celebrity, so it’s not an exact apple to apple comp, but the point is, as an editorial team we are thinking about these individuals, and she’s the most notable one right now. I’m reminded of a profile Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about GP back in 2018 (worth a re-read), reporting on Gwyneth’s visit to Harvard Business School, where she said that she has been able to exploit her “cultural firestorms” and bragged about being able to “monetize those eyeballs”. Since 2020, though, business seems to have dropped off, maybe because we got numb to the vagina eggs and vagina candles. But guess what? Her recent controversies have coincided with Goop Kitchen’s latest expansion, built on the ghost kitchen or dark kitchen model, even though this bitch claims to be one of the poster girls for “clean” eating. What’s depressing is that this aggressive expansion has been a massive success. Because people care more about gluten-free food than the fuckery she is upholding and endorsing. So, the dilemma isn’t just whether or not to call her out but also whether or not to have the conversations with the people in our communities who are her customers. There are a lot of them.

Question from SB via DM:

Mailbag posting shy, but since the topic of Heated Rivalry’s toxic fandom has come up multiple times this week, would love to see that all unpacked some - particularly expanding on the lack of media literacy…and also the vigilante aspect - fans feeling the responsibility to the very publicly defend the actors online or, now, physically (!?!). What is creating and feeding this mess?? Is this normal in fandom spaces now? Also interested in this from the actor/publicist/career perspective. Is there a best way to navigate all of this? All four of the main guys, but especially Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, have had such different experiences of it and reactions to it all (of course). And how do you think Heated Rivalry could deal with all of this during season 2 promo? Do we really think the fandom intensity will die off before then? (I also feel like these questions can’t be asked or addressed without acknowledging the Hudson Williams mess a few weeks ago - a direct result of the toxic fandom, but also of teenaged idiocy…this is probably a whole topic of its own to unpack, but it obviously factors into all of the above as well!)

Lainey’s Answer:

It is a lot to unpack, and I don’t know if I can get to all of it here, so I’ll start with Hudson and that awful photo that was shared a couple of weeks ago. The image was disgusting, a reflection of the ignorance and the deplorable behaviour and attitude of everyone depicted in that picture. Two things can true here – their actions were reprehensible and also the people who dug it up and disseminated it had nefarious motives. Like, do we seriously believe that the primary motivation of the person who found that photo and then posted it was to crusade against antisemitism?

If you trace it back, it looks like the image came from the toxic corner of the HR fandom that has been targeting Hudson for whatever fucked up reason and often engages in anti-Asian racism when they comment on him. And yes, in my experience, it is increasingly “normal” in fandom spaces now. But maybe that isn’t exactly an accurate description because it suggests that this is new-ish and I, personally, don’t think it is.

There was some fucking unhinged behaviour during Twilight but over 15 years ago, when it was only just Twitter and Instagram was still on the rise, and TikTok wasn’t around yet and pop culture “experts” analysing everything without qualification on YouTube were just getting started. So, there weren’t as many pipelines for the toxicity to leak into. In these times, there are that many more veins in which to inject the poison. I can tell you, from what I’ve seen, it was happening much earlier in East Asia with their social media and their fandoms being a lot more developed than their western counterparts. The west is now catching up.

Some of the Heated Rivalry fanbase is young, raised entirely on social media, and it’s true that they simply don’t have the literacy. What’s more sinister to me are the ones who are like the fangirl formerly known as Club Chalamet who is apparently well into her 50s. Because youth, in this case, and so many other cases, is no excuse. But I’m not just singling her out, I’m citing her in this context as I recently had a front row seat, like I could not have been closer to the action, since I was part of the action, to a situation where proper grownups completely misinterpreted a viral situation with their whole chest – and like Club Chalamet, they sounded like an authority on the issue, claiming they knew for sure, for sure, what was going down and who was to blame. They spoke with conviction, and they were convincing, like an insider.

But I was the real insider, SINCE I WAS THERE, and there was so much basic, fundamental show business 101 they had overlooked, so much context they were unaware of, that they could not have been more wrong. And yet, their faulty analysis was shared all over the fandom. The people I’m talking about are not overtly disturbing, like Club Chalamet. In fact, they present as reasonable and rational adults, NOT teenagers, which, to me, might even be scarier. Because they are so uninformed but they’re out here on these streets filming in vertical giving the illusion that they know everything – and people are actually believing it.

I’ll continue this, as it’s somewhat related, in the next question.

Question from MK (from one of the daily chats this week):

I don’t know what a story analyst is. I have no idea if this is true but it’s about J Lo and I believe it and I want better for our girl… What can be done?

Lainey’s Answer:

MK is referring to a TikTok that she linked to in one of the daily chats this week that I do not want to amplify. The person claims to have been Jennifer Lopez’s “story analyst” for two or three years and also says they were “Hollywood’s Best Story Analyst ten years in a row”, then proceeds to talk about how they tried to suggest so many better scripts and roles for JLo but that she never listened and in particular there was a movie that would have been great for her when she was in her 30s, but she turned it down.

I’m not here to dump on anyone, and this isn’t personal, but there are so many parts of this account that aren’t believable to me…even though this person is speaking authoritatively and, therefore to some, believably.

First of all, how is “Hollywood’s Best Story Analyst” even determined? I have worked with many screenwriters and story editors and showrunners in the business, including one of my closest friends who is also a longtime contributor to LaineyGossip and here at The Squawk. (You will hear from her in a minute on what story analysts and/or “readers” do in industry.) None of them have ever heard of whatever this title is and how one becomes “Hollywood’s Best Story Analyst”.

But for the purposes of my part of this question, let me focus on this specific example that they’re citing as “evidence” of JLo’s shitty film selection. According to their story, they found a great script for JLo when JLo was in her 30s, about a woman with colon cancer. JLo was born in 1969 so we’re dealing with a three-ish year period, allegedly, between 1999-2009, which also happens to be the decade when JLo released her most successful albums. Her debut album, On the 6, came out in 1999; “Waiting for Tonight” is on this album. Her next album, J.Lo, dropped two years later in 2001 and included some of her biggest hits, like “Love Don’t Cost a Thing”, “I’m Real”, and “Ain’t It Funny”.

Then came the album that now belongs in the Gossip Hall of Fame, This Is Me… Then, in 2002. So, to keep this in context, at this point, she’s in her mid-30s, and with three back-to-back smash albums, she’s a huuuuuge popstar. But also, a movie star.

Because these are the movies she’s in during this time:

The Cell (2000)

The Wedding Planner (2001)

Enough (2002)

Maid in Manhattan (2002)

With the Wedding Planner, JLo became the first woman to have the #1 movie at the box office and the #1 album on the charts in the same week.

After that hot streak in her early 30s, she made a shitty movie with Ben Affleck, almost got married to him, broke up with him (for the first time); married Marc Anthony, and released another album, Rebirth, not as culturally popular as the other three albums but it went platinum, meaning it sold a million copies, and it included “Get Right”, a major track in her catalogue, in part because of the video, which was in constant rotation on MTV and MuchMusic. It’s the one where she’s dancing with the cane. In the crop top with the silver harem pants. If you know gossip, you should know the look.

That was 2005. So now she’s in her mid-30s, and on the movie side she had Monster-In-Law with Jane Fonda, and An Unfinished Life with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman (!!!). The following year she and Marc co-starred in El Cantante. Then in 2007, they went on tour together, at the end of which they announced she was pregnant. In 2008, she gave birth to the twins. So that pretty much takes up all of her 30s, a decade where she was one of the top pop girlies in the game, and while she definitely had some flops, she also made some movies that were seen, in addition to prestige and passion projects that she could not have possibly turned down.

Where would she have had the time in this era, in her 30s? What would be the compelling rationale to do an indie film in which she plays a woman with colon cancer? Anyone advising her during this decade would have been like, uh, no, this is not the look we’re going for right now. Especially when, if you recall, nobody could stop talking about her ass. I just laughed out loud. Her ass was literally a pop culture preoccupation during those years – and this person is suggesting she do a movie about ass cancer? This is so unserious, are we sure they’re not trolling?

JLo’s career has been fine, more than fine. Her movies, particularly the Netflix ones, may not be Oscar-worthy, but they do well on the platform, the viewership numbers are strong. Otherwise, Netflix wouldn’t stay in business with her, she has a multi-year production deal with them. Her career is not in crisis, far from it.

But to bring it back to where this all started, with that TikTok and so much of the content on TikTok, by people who speak confidently so that it reads as authoritative – that’s our reality right now, when we watch a piece of content on social media and it’s presented in a certain way, with certain claims, it becomes factual, even though when you look deeper into the timeline and also the circumstances of the situation, it doesn’t quite add up.

And then there’s the mechanics of how the business works. For that, I’ll turn it over to Duana.

Duana’s Answer:

I don’t want to imply that there’s no such thing as a story analyst, because entertainment makes up titles all the time. In fact, this is now an accepted title that’s even in the IATSE (film & TV workers) union. But historically, this job was called a “reader”.

As job titles go, that’s unglamorous, but crystal clear: readers, in their most fundamental job description, are relatively low-paid contract or freelance workers, hired to analyze the constant influx of scripts in any particular company’s inbox. They do this via a pretty standardized process called writing “coverage”, basically, script-based CliffsNotes: 3-5 pages on story, character, big iconic plot moments or special effects, great moments for any particular character (especially important if you’re reading for a star who wants to portray a certain image) and then, crucially, whether they rank the script as a “Recommend”, “Consider”, or “Pass”, depending on whatever their company’s/boss’s mandate is.

Of note – agents’ and managers’ assistants also write plenty of coverage as part of their job, too, but there’s often too much for them, which is where freelance readers or, okay, story analysts, come in. They may also be asked to highlight which writers the company likes would be suitable for a rewrite, or in the case of a novel, who’d be great for the adaptation. And then, that’s the end of the job, often, at least for that script. Onto the next.

Script coverage is often seen as an excellent but entry-level job to get a foot in the door, and that means lots of people have done it. Not that that makes it unimportant; if a trusted reader slaps a “recommend” on a script, it’s at least making it one more rung up the ladder. But because the volume and pace of coverage is high, and because the Hollywood pipeline is designed such that most scripts, even the good ones, don’t and won’t get made, it means the name of the game for a reader is going through a lot of material, fast, and hoping your good taste gets noticed. Also, for the most part this is a transaction; the TikTok in question mentioned picking up (physical) scripts and then returning them with coverage, which was the case back in the pre-digital days. So, for the vast majority of story analysts, there would be no long, wheedling conversations about what star should pick up which project. That’s what the coverage is for.

Now, of course, some highly-regarded story analysts (who would probably quickly be re-titled “creative executive” or something, but that’s beside the point) are hired by stars’ own companies to seek things out for their A-Listers, which tracks. When you’re even tangentially in the, say, Reese Witherspoon or Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep business, you want to make sure you’re not wasting their time, so by the time you recommend they look at a script, it better be good. So, it tracks that if you are someone who’s sitting down with, say, Denzel Washington or George Clooney every few weeks or so to tell them what really stood out on your reading list in the past few weeks, I believe that truly great scripts would stick in the mind.

But because Lainey jogged our memories with the time period, I want to remind us of something else happening when Jennifer Lopez was in her 30s. That was the era of the persistent rumor that she had insured her famous ass for up to $300 million dollars. You remember this! You probably thought it was ridiculous but also maybe true, like we all did. Now consider how powerful that rumour and that ass were - they were part of her empire! Built the brand we’re still here talking about!

...and you’re telling me you recommended the most famous ass in the business to star in a movie about colon cancer?!? In earnest?? I don’t mean to internalize the bad behaviour I heard in the business back in the day, but I guarantee this would have been a HARD no and a firing, with some colourful language about how it was gonna kill the boner of every guy who lusted after her. That would be crass and rude and diminishing, but also somewhat understandable, because clearly the person who is recommending this script doesn’t get the Jennifer Lopez brand at all (I also think it strains credibility because the movie this person described was incredibly, incredibly generic and those are not usually the scripts that stick in the mind, but that’s another story for another day). There’s no way this person would continue reading scripts for Jennifer Lopez after that, I’m fairly certain.

By contrast, a story analyst who DID do their job is the person who managed to partner Jennifer Lopez with The Fosters, the mid 2010s underrated-as-hell ABC Family show about a multiracial blended foster family with a distinct Latinx element. Now obviously she was an Executive Producer on this one (along with Benny Medina), which has different requirements than a starring role – and I’m not under the impression JLo was sitting up late at night giving script notes…but…as this Extra interview below shows, it dovetails with things that were her brand: “Family = Love” and “tough times bring us together” and other tonally fitting themes for the person, and the brand, JLo was and is.

She can sell it and look smart and thoughtful and of the moment, which buys her more, and broader, capital. The Fosters ran for five seasons and then launched a spinoff, Good Trouble, that ran for five more; that’s the platonic ideal for the reader, or story analyst, who placed that first script in her hands, and I bet they launched a nice career out of it. I have no doubt there may be highly in-demand story analysts who make magical connections, bringing the right script to the right talent, but I don’t know if they’re marketing their brands the way this person did.

Question from Vitally Useless:

The talk about Obsession‘s art director, Sally Choi speaking out about how she will not get to partake in the film’s immense box office has reignited the debate about real profit participation for the cast and crew of independent films since they usually work for very low pay. Could real equity be achieved? Artistic labors of love still involve labor and when they pay off, should the below-the-line workers get a taste of that success?

Sarah’s answer:

For reference, here is Sally Choi’s original post about being paid $300/day to work as the art director on Obsession, a film which has now made $339 million and counting (it is still playing very well in theaters, will probably end up around $400 million worldwide). Obsession was made for $750,000; it sold to distributor Focus/Universal for around $14 million. Director Curry Barker said that the people who usually make money on independent films are the people who “took on some sort of risk”, meaning, I presume, investors putting money into the project, distributor/buyers, himself as the creative who developed/wrote the film as unpaid labor until he could sell the script, etc. He is definitely NOT referring to the production crew.

Personally, yes, I believe when a film is as wildly successful as Obsession, when we’re talking about a distributor bringing in hundreds of millions—even splitting box office with theaters, Focus/Universal is going to pull in around $200 million when all is said and done—that everyone should benefit. A rising tide lifts all boats. At the very least, when a film is this successful, I think there should be some kind of profit-sharing ladder, and everyone, even the lowliest assistant, should get a slice of pie. There is plenty of pie to go around.

But almost nobody does, it is not industry standard, and no one expects it. It’s very much like middle/working class voters voting against their interests, people uphold the status quo hoping to someday be on the winning side of it. The internet is nitpicking Sally Choi to death, saying she signed on knowing the pay, that she only had one feature film credit before Obsession and wouldn’t warrant a higher salary, blah blah. Yes, welcome to how exploitation works. People just starting out, people lower on the ladder, take shit jobs with shit pay to build their reputations and resumés and people higher on the ladder take advantage of that. It’s a tale as old as time.

And it doesn’t have to be this way. In 2020, John David Washington and Zendaya took a unique, profit-sharing deal for Malcom & Marie that shared equity with key crew members, such as department heads like art directors. It’s estimated those crew members each made around $300,000 when the film sold to Netflix.

Filmmaking is risky, and especially in the indie sector, where films like Obsession are made on absolute shoe-string budgets, which often means paying people the bare minimum. But when a film succeeds, everyone who worked on it should succeed, too. It’s actually embarrassing for Curry Barker to say, Well, no, I don’t think the people who worked long, physically demanding hours, had to fight to be reimbursed for their promised gas money, and took the risk of working below living wages don’t deserve to share in this film’s success. The more successful Obsession becomes, the worse it looks.

Question from Cherie:

Any thoughts on the Mark Lee Confederate flag t shirt controversy? His record label issued a statement, but I’m not sure the reason holds up?

Lainey’s Answer:

Trigger Warning: this section contains references to sexual assault.

I agree, the reason does not hold up. Here’s the full statement that his label, Upper Room, which he founded recently, posted on IG Stories.

Mark Lee was born in Canada and spent time in New York and Vancouver until he was a teen, when he was discovered at a K-pop audition and moved to Korea. He would have had opportunities for exposure to that flag and what it symbolises. But even if you expand the limits of plausibility and allow, generously, for his ignorance and awareness, this is not the first time he’s been exposed to a controversy about this flag and wearing it.

Mark, until recently, was a member of NCT and its sub-units alongside another member, Taeil, who is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for aggravated rape. His name is dirt in the industry but as K-pop fans have been pointing out this week, even before the crime, Taeil was already a problem because he wore a t-shirt with that flag. I won’t share the photo here but if you want to see it, here’s a link to a tweet and a Reddit thread where someone posts it in the comments.

It’s impossible that Mark wouldn’t have been aware of the reaction to that shirt when his teammate wore it, so how another one ended up on his body is sus as fuck.

Racism is a problem everywhere, so of course it’s a problem in K-pop. And in Korea in particular, not unlike in the west, right-wing influence has been escalating for years, especially among young men. When I was in Seoul last year, it was during weeks of protests and rallies in response to the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, a hard-line conservative who won the election in 2022 on a misogynistic platform that activated the Korean manosphere. Many of the people that I clocked who were marching and chanting in support of the disgraced president were holding MAGA signs, adopting MAGA techniques, following the MAGA playbook. There were American flags all over the pro-Yoon side of street.

Just as it is in the United States, where 56% of the vote among men ages 18 to 29 went to Trump, voting followed a similar pattern in South Korea where there is a deep political divide between young men and women. The birth rate in Korea has been dropping steadily, in part specifically because young women are discouraged by toxic masculinity and rape and incel culture that has been disturbingly on the rise in the country.

I’m not saying that Mark Lee has ties to any of these groups, what I’m saying is that he very easily could be around people, or connected to people who are because of the dramatic shift of young Korean men in their 20s and 30s to the right. He wasn’t alone when he put on that t-shirt and posed for a photo in it.

Thank you for making it to the end of this long mailbag. And thanks for all that you do to keep this community such a fun and thoughtful place.

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey, Sarah, and Duana

(Trigger warning: this piece discusses sexual abuse of minors. Please read with care.)

Last week, former reality TV child Collin Gosselin, now 22, announced he’s written an upcoming memoir with Hachette, detailing his suffering behind the scenes of Jon & Kate Plus 8. Collin was watched by tens of millions of people for close to ten years, he and his siblings have huge name recognition. And though the publisher’s description stops short of naming names, some verbal and emotional abuse was filmed and aired on international television. As close as it comes to a slam dunk where ‘allegations’ are concerned, right?

It took years, and tragic situations, for anyone to listen to him. Even though everybody knew.

I’ve confessed many times that I was a specific type of dork as a teen. Like many future writers, I was full-italics dramatic and passionate and romantic about the usual subjects: writers, actors, artists, and at one point, classical musicians.

Though a deeply average piano student myself (more on this later), I loved the subculture: young people work tirelessly to make their mark at special schools, in special competitions – this was my catnip. It was also the 90s, so I was primed to imprint on ‘cool girls’: phenoms like Vanessa-Mae or Lara St. John, massively talented singular performers with eye-catching album covers marketed as take-no-prisoners badasses I hoped to emulate in attitude, if not in music.

Fast forward a few decades – the marketing did not lie. Late last year, lurking on violin message boards as is my dorky wont, I learned about Dear Lara, a documentary written and directed by Lara St. John about long-held secrets of sexual abuse in classical music. St. John is Canadian, from London, ON, but after studying around the world and touring internationally as a soloist from ages 10-13 (!), she and her brother were both accepted to the highly selective Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, with its “3% acceptance rate; about the same as Harvard”, she points out.

At 14, she was raped and repeatedly abused by lauded professor Jascha Brodsky, who threatened to kick out both Lara and her brother if she complained. She was terrified of ending both their careers, but still went to the dean of this august institution, who guffawed: “Who do you think [the police] are going to believe? Some kid, or a teacher who’s been with the school for decades?” …

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Dear Squawkers,

It feels like it’s been the most high-key celebrity and sports pop culture crossover year we’ve had in years. And across a variety of different sports, starting at the Olympics and also Formula 1, the relentless reporting on the TNT wedding, and then of course most recently with both the NBA playoffs and the ongoing World Cup. And where the World Cup is concerned, I’m not just talking about all the famous people who are showing up at the games or the artists who performed at the kickoff games and will perform at halftime during the final next month. This week there’s been a huge media scandal that intersects athletes and idols from South Korea. I am obsessed with this story, and not just because I love K-pop.

A brief primer: the captain of the South Korean national team is Son Heung-min, aka Sonny, already a legend in his country, and arguably the most successful Korean footballer of all time when you consider his achievements with Tottenham Hotspur FC, where he became the first and only Asian player to win the Premier League Golden Boot and has more goals and assists than any Asian player in Premier League history. He is currently representing South Korea in his FOURTH World Cup, which means he has the most caps of any Korean footballer in history, by a huge margin. And in this tournament, he is aiming for the Korean scoring record in international play. Needless to say, in Korea he is an icon, a very, very, very big deal.

In 2018, Sonny led South Korea to a gold medal in men’s football at the Asian Games, which earned the entire team an exemption from mandatory military service. The exemption for athletic international excellence (like the Asian Games and the Olympics) has been in place since the 1970s, so Sonny and his teammates are not the first to have received the pass. Instead of serving the 18 months that is the standard expectation for all men in Korea by the time they turn 28, he instead completed basic training for three weeks in 2020 during COVID. He was just about to turn 28. And then, two years later, in 2022, he won the Golden Boot (shared with Mo Salah), scoring the most goals in the Premier League that’s season. So, you can see why the exemption was critical – the Golden Boot would not have happened without it. And also why there is a strong argument to be made in cases like his, since time and age are such major factors for athletes at that level.

So now back to the scandal…

During a training session ahead of the World Cup, as Korean journalists were observing the team practice, two reporters could be heard on a hot mic talking shit about Sonny and the exemption. The clip, with that audio, was then broadcast on South Korean television. The players, understandably, are outraged – outraged to the point where they are boycotting their own domestic media, a blackout has been declared; it’s being called a civil war, where the South Korean team is basically telling the South Korean press to go fuck themselves. The Korean Football Association has also publicly and privately reprimanded the South Korean press corps.

And what’s even more interesting is that one of the reasons this has erupted into such big news internationally is because of the Mexican media and Mexican fans. The South Korean national team is playing their group stage matches in Mexico. As we saw a few weeks ago when BTS was on tour in Mexico City, “South Korean fervor in Mexico has been years in the making, growing into a mass movement that has seen President Claudia Sheinbaum share a balcony with K-pop royalty BTS, and visiting World Cup fans greeted with the chant: “Korean, my brother, you’re now Mexican.” (Source)

It was the Mexican media and public that assisted in amplifying this story to the next level, to the point where it’s become a major World Cup storyline, triggering the rage valve of K-culture fans everywhere – because there’s so much history here. K-drama and K-pop fans have long been familiar with the fuckassness of the Korean media, how selectively cruel and irresponsible they’ve been, for years, where celebrities are concerned, sometimes with devastating consequences. In 2024, Bong Joon Ho was joined by several of the most acclaimed artists in South Korea at a press conference to condemn the actions of the media and the police sources leaking to the media for their actions after Lee Sun-kyun, who Director Bong directed in Parasite, died by suicide following weeks of relentless misinformation. The public feeding frenzy, of course, contributes to tragedies like Lee’s and other public figures who’ve succumbed to the same fate, but the media in South Korea in these cases has not shown any restraint, instead inflaming potentially catastrophic situations.

BTS fans, ARMY, are too familiar with this behaviour. Over the last 13 years since their debut, RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook have been regularly dismissed, disrespected, and lied about in the Korean press. While they haven’t openly thrown down against Korean media, it’s been pretty obvious that well before the South Korean national football team boycotted domestic outlets, BTS had already arrived there, bypassing most of the traditional Korean media outlets during the last several album cycles.

BTS is Korea’s most popular artistic export, with a massive fanbase in Mexico and beyond. So, when the news about Sonny and the hot mic got out the other day, it released a simmering rage in the fandom that has been waiting to explode for years – and when you add national pride and athletic stakes to the equation, well, it’s been a karmic detonation. That’s a direct line between music and entertainment and sport, the most pop culture of pop culture scandals. The Korean media has now managed to make an enemy out of BTS and the South Korean national football team DURING THE WORLD CUP, basically alienating the two most powerful cultural groups in their country.

Let’s get to the mailbag…

Question from Hannah M:

I’ve seen people mention that Canada doesn’t have the same paparazzi/celebrity sighting culture you see in LA, but I’m curious, does that extend to hockey players and/or other pro athletes? I know how big a deal hockey is (especially in Montreal and Toronto) and the NHL finals have me wondering if, idk, Conner McDavid has the same profile as Lewis Hamilton, but just for Canada. All the talk of East Asian media and celebrities in the daily chat has me thinking about how fame is relative.

Lainey’s Answer:

I am only one Canadian, so I can’t speak for all the people in this country. What I can say on behalf of me, myself, and I, is that in my experience, yes that does extend to hockey players…but maybe not other pro athletes. Because I don’t care about hockey, so I barely know who any hockey players are. Jacek can attest to the fact that up until maybe last year, I could never get Connor McDavid’s name right, I always mixed up the Connor and the David. And I still don’t know what he looks like. I don’t know what any of them look like. Here’s another example: a couple of years ago, Jacek and I stayed at a hotel downtown because I was hosting an event. We were in the elevator with a man. When we got out of the elevator, Jacek said, “That was X from the Y” where X = hockey player and Y = his hockey team. The details left my brain the moment they entered it.

Note from Jacek:

X = Andrei Vasilevskiy

Y = Tampa Bay Lightning

A few weeks after that, I was at a restaurant with some friends and there was a whole table of hockey players from a visiting team playing the Toronto Maple Leafs, including one of their top stars. Nobody paid them any attention, it wasn’t just me. The only reason I know this, though, is because when they got up to leave, I could see that they were all wearing or holding something (a t-shirt/hat/backpack) with the team logo. You can ask me what Nicole Kidman wore to almost any award show and I could tell you, but I can’t tell you what the team or the logo was because I have hockey blindness. I also have a theory about this that I’d appreciate your thoughts on, if you think it’s dumbass, please tell me in the comments.

The theory is related to both appearance and personality. On appearance, if I were sitting across a restaurant from Connor McDavid, it would never register. If I was sitting across a restaurant from Luka Dončić? I’d clock him right away. Hockey players are hard to see! Like, they’re under all that equipment and they’re wearing helmets, I find it more difficult to distinguish their features. As opposed to other team sports, like basketball or football, where the players can showcase that much more flair on the court and the pitch and you can see their hair, their body shapes, their expressions are that much more pronounced. And then off the ice, sorry, but hockey player style is boring, the hockey tunnel has never been a fashion show. It hasn’t been a year since the league relaxed its dress code, so maybe I’ll have a different assessment in the future but right now, pro hockey players, in that department, are still catching up to the athletes in other sports.

That lack of flair also applies to their demeanor. Is there a player in the NHL who can even come close to the entertainment value of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in a press conference? Is there a player in the NHL who is as quotable as Anthony Edwards? No – and the reason is because hockey culture demands uniformity. “We’re just gonna take it shift by shift, get pucks in deep”, that’s the joke but it’s also the truth. We just had an example of this six months ago at the World Juniors. Jacek told me about this because he knows how I feel about how dullness is imposed on hockey players, much to the sport’s detriment. So when he forwarded the story to me, he was like, here, more for your arsenal.

Calgary Flames rookie defenceman Zayne Parekh was representing Canada at the World Juniors and he performed really well. He is – or was – known for his smile and fun attitude and he was asked “why he’s so comfortable baring his soul to the media”. His response:

“I think it’s more watching NHL guys be robots and not having any personality. I think you need some personality, and it’s the best way to grow the game. I don’t want to come in here and be a robot. When I’m in Calgary, I definitely have a lot of guys that are telling me to give really simple answers. But here I could kind of do what I want.”

If you know anything about hockey, I’m sure you can imagine the blowback. He was spoken to about being so outspoken. And he ended up apologising. If my middle-aged husband, who grew up playing hockey, was and still is immersed in hockey culture, watches almost every Vancouver Canuck game all season, and obsessively texts his friends about hockey gossip through the winter, if even Jacek rolled his eyes at hockey culture’s reaction to this then 19-year-old kid actually giving the sport someone interesting to root for, then the sport needs more Zaynes than robots.

So, to go back to my theory, and your question, robots don’t stand out in a crowd.

Sarah’s answer:

Heated Rivalry’s greatest trick is making people think hockey players are interesting.

Question from Andrea2:

Sarah, I have thought you did not think that “feedback” from the audience was a reason to change casting, plot (what audience wants, vs. needs, etc.). From all your comments regarding The Pitt, that seems to have changed. Is it not the writers’ vision that should guide the show and not outside forces? You may not like the product, but it’s not “our” product. I feel as if the folks that are up in arms really want the show to change its course given Robby’s annoying and male driven personality, but does that really mean it will be a better show? - we aren’t writing it. I do not get the lack of respect for allowing a show/series creators to do what they want. Don’t like it, don’t watch it, and it will fail. Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones, The Bear anyone? I guess my question is, when does it become piling on after an opinion is given regarding the above? I think your movie reviews are wonderful, totally spot on and you are a gifted writer. … I just read my question, and if it sounds angry - that’s not my intent. I am truly curious how/when it’s ok to question a writers’ room for their choice in storyline. If we believe that said room is stupid, myopic, etc. that’s cool. But again, do you think that calling them out will result in better vision?

Sarah’s answer:

No, I don’t think calling them out will result in a better vision, but also, that’s my actual job as a critic. In my original post about this, I brought up bias, and how the show directly addresses biases in many forms, yet the writers/producers might be dealing with a bias problem of their own. This is a critique of the show I have had since two women of color were written off the show, one of which had no narrative reason to depart the story at this juncture. Dr. Mohan will still be in her final year of residency during season three. Depending on time jumps, season three or four would be her “natural” exit point, completing her residency and moving on.

My issue with The Pitt’s storytelling is that from season one, it felt like they were setting Samira Mohan up to be a fulcrum for a specific story point (which seemed to be pointing toward Robby’s internal misogyny. He SAYS the right things regarding female patients, but rarely DOES the right things for his female residents). However, in writing Mohan off the show, she ended up leaving with a whimper, not a bang. The storyline (semi)resolved in a very unsatisfying way, which I find to be poor writing. My job as a critic is to highlight things like this. Does the show have an internal bias problem? I feel at this point, this is a fair question to ask, given the show’s own themes and creative decisions that seem to clash with those themes.

I don’t think it’s piling on for the audience of a show to express disappointment in storylines, etc. It’s how we engage with the media we consume. What’s the alternative? Never engage, never think critically? It’s not a lack of respect for viewers of a show to say, “I don’t like how that went.” A lack of respect is people harassing creatives online or at live events (and some people are doing that, and that does suck), but just sharing an opinion, as a fan or a professional critic, that is just floating in the ether with no one forced to read/listen to it, isn’t disrespectful or harassing. People are allowed to have and share opinions; critics are engaged in a project of assessing and critiquing media and art.

Season two of The Pitt was widely lauded, including by me. By the end of the season, though, a key creative decision—writing off Mohan—potentially highlights a trouble spot brewing under the surface of the show. A bunch of people noticed it, including me. The writers are not obligated to do anything about it. But we as the audience are also not obligated to ignore it. In literal millennia of criticism existing, no one has ever “solved” this gap. It’s the inherent tension of criticism, no one is required to respond but critics don’t have to shut up, either.

Question from Jessica:

Question for Sarah, why are there both TCA (Television Critics Association) awards and Critics’ Choice Awards for TV? Are these not the same critics? Heated Rivalry recently got TCA nominations and I was like, why are the Critic’s Choice awards happening outside of awards season?? Confusing!

Sarah’s answer:

Yes, there is some membership overlap between the Television Critics Association (TCA) and the Critics Choice Association (CCA). But the key difference is that CCA (of which I am a member) is a critics’ organization and TCA is a TRADE organization. There are critics in TCA, and they vote on the TCA Awards, but the TCA also hosts the biannual “upfronts” at which television networks and streamers pitch their upcoming slates for advertisers. There is a trade element of TCA that CCA does not have.

Also, CCA includes film critics and the Critics Choice Awards honor film and television. TCA is an organization strictly dedicated to television. There is a lot of overlap, but that is also a key difference.

Question from Patty:

Is there a reason that Alexa Demie’s career seems to have stalled? I know that she felt filming Euphoria after season 2 was overwhelming, and paraphrasing a bit here, and she needed a break, but 4 years? A side note I don’t think she is a very good interviewee, just seems a little bland. Just my opinion. She was the only one to do a major interview for Euphoria, besides Sam.

Lainey’s Answer:

Alexa Demie may have answered your question herself. She was profiled a few weeks ago in The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s the passage that might address it:

“Sometimes Demie’s friends will send her takes from the internet about her relative lack of fame. “It’s like, did you ever think that I don’t want it?” she says. “People really take the authority out of your hands. What happened to my ability to choose? I like my life like this, and I wouldn’t change it.”

What she’s saying is that it’s not that she needed a break, but that she wasn’t pursuing conventional markers for success. Once in a while, there are actors who don’t want to be capital letter Movie Stars. And she just might be one of them. Before the third and final season of Euphoria, Alexa hadn’t posted on Instagram in almost three years. Three years in these times is practically a century. This makes her an outlier, so I might actually believe her when she says that she’s chosen a low-key level of celebrity.

The other passage in that THR piece that popped for me relates to why social media is so fixated on this issue:

“Fans of ‘Euphoria’ often wonder why Demie didn’t follow the career trajectory of her co-stars. Traditional Hollywood logic reasons that, since Maddy Perez has been the critical and cultural favorite…”

A list started forming in my mind, made up of other actresses in young adult ensembles from previous generations – The O.C. and Gossip Girl. In those series, “the critical and cultural favorite[s]” were Summer Roberts and Blair Waldorf played respectively by Rachel Bilson and Leighton Meester, both of whom were more popular and interesting during their show runs than the intended “It girls” of those stories but less famous, at least in the moment, than Mischa Barton and Blake Lively. Alexa is the Leighton to Sydney Sweeney’s Blake. (Because Zendaya is in her own solar system.) I have never been a believer in Sydney Sweeney, even before she became MAGA Barbie – I honestly don’t get the hype, her acting annoys me, I find her performances utterly forgettable. Alexa, on the other hand, always surprises me with her choices, so I get why it’s been such a mystery why she hasn’t made the climb.

But maybe that explains what you describe as “bland”. Maybe it’s just that her ambition looks different. What I take away from her recent interview isn’t so much that she’s bland but that she’s kinda…woo-woo. Not even kinda, she is totally woo-woo, but not performatively woo-woo. She’s not woo-wooing on a podcast or on TikTok, she’s not woo-woo selling crystals and vitamins. She’s woo-woo off-camera, a majority of the time – and given what a dirty and fake business Hollywood can be, talking to the trees is probably a better way to spend her time than talking to executives and agents and influencers who just want to game the algorithm.

The chats were so buzzy this week – thank you for checking in every day and nurturing this community. And thanks also for your questions and giving us so much to think and write about.

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey and Sarah

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Dear Squawkers,

How do you measure popularity? In Korea, the Korean Business Research Institute releases monthly lists that literally rank idols and celebrities, like the Billboard charts, on how well their music and/or dramas and/or tours are performing and how much people like them. Over in China, there’s a heat index for television series, kinda sorta like the ratings system that exists in the west…but they’re not just tracking viewership, they’re tracking social media participation and mentions, and this results sometimes in in-fighting between fandoms that can get pretty intense.

There’s no real equivalent, like an actual published list for individual celebrity popularity for western stars but if there was, Mariska Hargitay might be ranked higher than she ever has been before. Even though she was seated next to Taylor Swift at game four of the NBA Finals in New York on Wednesday night to watch the Knicks pull off that improbable come-from-behind win, and Taylor often dominates the boards whenever she shows up anywhere, a lot of people are talking about Mariska Hargitay, loving on Mariska Hargitay, not only for her devotion to her basketball team but for the way she demonstrated her devotion on Wednesday night. On my timeline there are as many, if not more, videos of Mariska’s reaction during and after the game than there are of Taylor Swift. Here’s an example – this one’s been viewed over a million times, and it should tell you her status with the Knicks. She’s basically running around the court like it’s her backyard, heading straight for OG Anunoby…

… and also Rick Brunson.

Mariska revealed to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday how she was able to make it from the Hudson Theater, where she was performing in Every Brilliant Thing, over to Madison Square Garden in time for the second half. Every Brilliant Thing is a one-person show and it’s her Broadway debut; she took over in late May in the production from Daniel Radcliffe. On top of that, as is standard Broadway schedule, where there are two shows on Wednesdays (matinee and evening), she was doubling down, literally. Let’s just recap that: two shows, in a show where it’s ONLY her – like, she’s not relying on someone else’s monologue to get a breather, and after all that, she still had all her gears going at the game, which ended at almost midnight. In her words, here’s how she did it:

“I took four minutes off the running time of my show, and I knew the traffic would be crazy, so I sprinted from the Hudson Theater on 44th and 6th to MSG,” Hargitay writes in a statement to ‘The Hollywood Reporter’. “But I knew everything was going to be alright, because I was wearing my Jalen Brunson Kobe 5 Protos that Jalen gave me a few months ago. But I’m not gonna lie, the ten block sprint after a 2-show day was no joke.”

She went onto say in her statement that:

“I love my husband, and our wedding night was great and all, but I think it might have been the greatest night of my life. The game was so brutal, down 29 at the half, but I’m telling you, to watch this team fight and claw their way back — to see that look in Jalen’s eyes — there are just endless life lessons in there. And then OG comes flying in, his orange and blue cape fluttering behind him, and then it’s just pandemonium. It‘ll get replayed again and again, not just as an epic moment in basketball, but on the highlight reel of the best moments in sports. And all I could think was “THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!” And “OH MY GOD, I LOVE THIS TEAM!!!” And “OH MY GOD, I LOVE THIS CITY!!!”

As we all know, the city loves her. Almost everyone loves her. Who doesn’t love Mariska Hargitay? There are very few celebrities who are as UN-polarising as Mariska Hargitay…but… (don’t worry, I’m not about to shit on Mariska Hargitay, are you crazy, I’m not that stupid)…

But to go back to that heat index, and celebrity rankings, if we have to, let’s admit that in pop culture, in terms of status, and hierarchy, using the common vocabulary of this ecosystem, Mariska wouldn’t be top of mind if you were to do a poll of “A-list” stars. And the point I’m coming to is that…well…this is our bad, and maybe after these last few weeks, we should take Jalen Brunson’s lead. Because in his mind, and by his actions, she is the #1 star, the ONLY “A-list” star. As Ben Stiller said, she is the only star he really acknowledges. It’s not like she doesn’t have the credentials, so why aren’t we (and by “we” I mean pop culture) more impressed by them?

Mariska Hargitay is currently the highest-paid actor in television, with an estimated per episode fee of $750,000 which includes acting and producing. She also gets a back-end cut from residuals. Law & Order: SVU is on alllllll the time. And it’s been on for 27 seasons; it’ll be 28 seasons in the fall. She’s been there from the beginning. Almost every season is OVER 20 EPISODES (with the exception of a couple due to COVID and strikes). This is not like the shows we know on streaming with a max of ten episodes and sometimes as many as three years between seasons. She is a gangster for how hard she works and how consistently she works – and it’s the kind of work we don’t see anymore in the industry.

One role? For 27 seasons? ONE ROLE? That schedule doesn’t really allow her a whole lot of time to do much else. She’s on Broadway for the first time during hiatus, and once in a while she shows up in a music video or a commercial. But, really and truly, she is Olivia Benson. Ellen Pompeo couldn’t even outlast her on Grey’s Anatomy.

And, again, this is rare. Rare that unlike sooooo many other actors she hasn’t gotten bored of it. And isn’t lured down that path of temptation to go to film or to seek whatever it is that others define to be more “prestigious”. Whatever it is that is allegedly more “prestigious”, I promise you it’s not more challenging than what she’s bringing to her show, for 27 straight seasons, as the same character, and also producing. It is, however, very very smart. She’s the most powerful person on that call-sheet and she is fucking ubiquitous. In the United States and Canada, you probably can’t go six hours without finding her on some channel somewhere. Jalen Brunson is obsessed with her because he grew up watching her with his family, with his grandparents and parents. So, ultimately, in the fame game, isn’t that what they all want? Isn’t that the mark you want to leave behind? To be a generational star in the sense that every generation of a family knows you? Jalen Brunson is right. Mariska Hargitay is A-list.

Also no one was surprised the day after game four that she showed up for work and somehow worked the Knicks into it.

Now to the mail…

Question from Charlotte:

Can we get the play-by-play of how you made JLo laugh?

Lainey’s Answer:

I was assigned a couple of weeks ago to the Office Romance junket (it was virtual for ETALK) and while I wasn’t super concerned about Brett Goldstein’s vibe, I was a bit worried about Jennifer Lopez. Because it’s more challenging in a virtual interview. And also, it was early in the day, and I was early in the first group of the day – sometimes in a virtual setting when you’re getting celebrities at 10am, when they haven’t warmed up yet, they can be flat. I’ve interviewed JLo enough times by now to know that she works better in the same room, when you can kinda bounce some energy off of her, she’s too much of a professional not to respond and return it. But it’s harder to achieve when you’re doing it over Zoom.

In our planning sessions, then, my producer Elise and I really strategised on the order of questions and also the tone of the questions. Our goal was to keep the questions connected to the spirit of the movie, of course, but also try and get a little silliness out of the two of them. So, we started off with a question about rom-coms and their value and then I asked Brett to basically assess himself against the other actors in the JLo rom-com Hall of Fame, since he’s the latest member. But the question was worded with all kinds of penis innuendo because, spoiler alert…

His character in the movie pops a boner while shaking her hand after a good day at work. So, after a few other dick euphemisms, I ended the question on how he “rose” to the occasion. Which he picked up on right away, and giggled knowingly, which then set up the next question that made JLo laugh, like she actually threw her head back and laughed. This video has been slightly edited – the question was about manifestation because she’s really big into it, so what’s been cut out of this post is me talking about her powers of manifestation before I drop in with the kicker (tap this link or the image below to see the Reel):

Elise and I workshopped that question for a while. Basically, we wanted to know if, since he’s already manifested himself into a movie with JLo, whether or not Brett could also be in one of her music videos. But simply saying, “Hey Brett, how badly do you want to be in one of JLo’s videos?” isn’t going to get the same reaction. So, the key to the question, which Elise and I eventually landed on, was the phrase “video vixen”. It’s an evocative expression – everyone knows what a video vixen looks like the moment you hear the words. But if you’re using the words “video vixen” in relation to Brett Goldstein, it’s a whole other visual. And that’s what JLo’s brain was processing when I asked the question, resulting in the laugh. From both of them. Because then they started picturing him as a video vixen – and then I kinda just stepped back and let the two of them freeball on his video vixen potential. They went on for a bit there, so I actually ran out of time for another question that Elise and I really, really wanted to get to so it’s too bad that it’s still sitting in the chamber waiting for its time.

The idea came up when we were noodling with the whole narrative that Brett is JLo’s biggest fan and has a PhD in all her movies – but we didn’t want to just repeat that because we thought probably everyone would have asked them about it. During our brainstorm we were like, OK so he’s seen all her movies, but does he know her music? And at the same time, we were talking about how viral “On the Floor” has been lately, and every few minutes we’d just break out singing to each other…

“La la la la la la la la la la la la la la

Tonight we gon’ be it on the floor”

Then one of us wondered – do you think he knows the lyrics beyond that?

That’s when it came to us, we just needed to figure out how to get there. I practised the shit out of the timing for this question, thinking back on it now, I’m actually kinda pissed that there wasn’t enough time to get to it because I think it would have been funny. This was the set-up:

“Brett, like all JLovers (the name of her fans), you already know that Jennifer is our rom-com queen and…our queen deserves a king who is worthy of her. We would like you to prove your worth. Are you ready?

Brazil, Morocco, London to … (said in monotone)”

If he couldn’t fill in the blank, the plan was for me to start shouting it:

“BRAZIL, MOROCCO, LONDON TO … !!!!”

It was a way to kill two birds with one stone: address the surge in popularity of the song but also involve Brett and set up a situation where no matter what happened, there would be the potential of something funny happening. Either he wouldn’t know, at which point we could tease him, or JLo would speak to her excitement about “On the Floor” hitting so hard after all these years, or Brett would turn into a fangirl and start singing the song.

Ted Lasso season four is coming out soon. Maybe if I’m on that junket, I can pull this one out of the vault.

Question from Emma:

I was just watching the Bryan Cranston and Rhea Seehorn Actors on Actors interview, and between the 5:00-6:00 minute mark Rhea is clearly uncomfortable answering Bryan’s question about how long Pluribus takes to shoot. She ends up saying (to someone off camera) “actually I do want that cut” and seems quite serious about it. Obviously, it wasn’t cut so I was wondering how much sway the actors have in that kind of scenario. My assumption was that she must have ended up being happy with keeping in that question/answer, but would the actor typically get a say/sign-off on the final cut for something like this? Or is it more a case of once the cameras are rolling, you’re on record, like it or not?

Lainey’s Answer:

So, the moment that is being referred to here in the Variety Actors on Actors between Bryan Cranston and Rhea Seehorn is related to how Vince Gilligan runs his sets and specifically the shooting schedule, which both of them would be super familiar with on Breaking Bad and Pluribus. Bryan asks Rhea about the length of the Pluribus shoot – she says it was ten or eleven months, which is long. You can watch below, starting at the 5 minute mark:

Here’s why she might have been nervous about saying that on camera. Pluribus season one is nine episodes. Ten to eleven months for nine episodes is atypical. In television, the typical shoot time per episode is eight days. (Duana taught me all of this, I’m nerdy about the logistics inside baseball of television production.) Ten to eleven months for nine episodes is way more than eight days per episode. If they were shooting five days a week, that works out to around-ish 20 days per episode – a lot more than industry standard. That said, in the age of premium television, and Pluribus is very premium, those “standards” can and do change.

As you can see from Bryan’s reaction, though, and he’s not exactly a rookie, ten to eleven months is a lot. So, I suspect that her nervousness was not wanting to give the impression that Vince Gilligan is irresponsible with time and, more importantly, resources. Especially not now. Sarah has written a lot at LaineyGossip and here at The Squawk about shrinking budgets and Hollywood cost saving, often at the expense of quality. And, honestly, there are directors and showrunners who…let’s say…lack restraint, maybe even vision, wasting time and money without a clear idea of what they’re looking for. (Ahem, Sam Levinson.) Vince Gilligan doesn’t have that reputation.

Pluribus is expensive and evidently extensive, but not wasteful – you can see the quality on the screen and in the scripting. Rhea may have been worried that her words, perhaps, might be misconstrued and/or manipulated for nefarious purposes. It could be that she was protecting Vince’s right to work how he needs to work to get the kind of show that he can deliver. Or it could be that she was wary of other people in the business being all like, what? Vince gets that much patience and time and funding when I had to bring my show in in just four months? Not unlike any other workplace or industry, really, when people feel resentful and perceive that others have more benefits than they do. And Hollywood in particular is full of jealous vipers.

As for final sign-off and whether or not she could actually demand that they cut that part from the segment…

If it’s hard news, or what’s left of it, like an interview with 60 Minutes (they do celebrity interviews from time to time), or what it used to be, or 20/20, or similar, it is very offside to make that kind of request. You can try, but there’s no guarantee, and it wouldn’t be a good look. At least not in the past. We’ve been seeing it play out in real time how politicians are pressuring journalists to abandon journalistic principles in their reporting and their coverage which is actually what’s been happening for decades in celebrity reporting.

Celebrities have no problem telling entertainment outlets what they can and cannot ask. They have no problem requesting that a portion of the interview not be aired, to cut out an answer. I know of situations where they’ve even asked for glamour changes, like vocal adjustments and tuning when it’s a performance. Even filtering and tweaking if it’s about the appearance. This is why so many people love Tiny Desk, because Tiny Desk is super strict about live performance and does not allow artists to remix or adjust after the fact. What we’re seeing once the performances go live on Tiny Desk’s YouTube is how it was when it happened.

To go back to Variety, and whether or not they would honour a request from a celebrity to take out a certain portion of the conversation – they’re probably less accommodating than, say, PEOPLE Magazine. But Variety is still in the business of celebrity transactions, and they do need to work with celebrities and their teams for coverage and access. So, if Rhea’s team pushed hard enough, in my opinion, they probably would have found a way to make it work without that part.

Question from Cherie:

I watched Is God Is over the weekend and I’m still not over it. The acting was incredible, especially from Broadway legend Kara Young and Sterling K. Brown. I’m astounded that this is the directorial debut for Aleshea Harris. I think I know the answer, but are the odds slim that this film will get some awards love?

Sarah’s answer:

For reference, here is the trailer for Is God Is, a mystery/thriller—kind of western?—written and directed by award-winning playwright Aleshea Harris.

As a play, Is God Is won the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award, and as a film it is Harris’s feature film debut as a writer/director. Harris is also a Pulitzer finalist, so she has serious bona fides as a playwright coming into cinema. While Is God Is is a smaller film, it is backed by Amazon MGM, though it is exactly the kind of film that can easily get lost in the awards season shuffle. It has been received very well by critics and audiences, but that audience is, admittedly, small. Added to that is Amazon MGM’s inconsistent award season campaigning. I don’t immediately count on them to back a film like this, especially this year when they will already be throwing significant resources into Project Hail Mary.

However, Is God Is is also the kind of film that might appear on the trophy trail seemingly out of nowhere just by landing one or two early “indicator” prizes. Think a Gotham Awards nomination/win, or a spot on the National Board of Review’s top 10 for the year. It is entirely too early to tell if this can happen for Is God Is and/or Aleshea Harris, but this is definitely a title to remember for later this year. Also, Is God Is is now available on VOD if you want to check it out for yourself.

Question from Margaret:

I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, to see Serena Williams coming back to tennis after four years. Do you know why or what happened? She’s the GOAT and I fear this will somehow sully her reputation. Has she struggled with her post-tennis life?

Lainey’s Answer:

Sarah addressed this question in last week’s mailbag but I wanted to come back to this because Serena played her first match at Queen’s Club this week, with doubles partner Victoria Mboko, and won, although they did not advance because Victoria sustained an injury in her singles match on Wednesday and withdrew from the tournament.

Serena’s serve was still impressive, though questions remain about how well she can actually move around the court since mobility is not as tested in doubles play. So far then, and I know it’s only been one outing, her reputation has not been sullied.

But there is something to consider when we’re talking about how Serena has experienced retirement and whether not there’s more nuance to her unretirement in comparison to other GOATs, like Tom Brady. And it has everything to do with being a woman.

Serena won her 23^rd and final (so far) grand slam, the Australian Open, in January 2017 while she was pregnant with her first child, Olympia. At 36 years old, she was playing well enough to win. So, presumably, she would have been competitive for the rest of the 2017 season had she not taken time off to grow and then give birth to her child – which, obviously, was the priority.

Male athletes don’t have to pause their careers when they are still the best in the sport to start a family. But female athletes must make this choice all the time, often when they are at the height of their abilities. And male athletes are often still playing when their children are old enough to see them on the pitch or the field or the fairway or the rink. So maybe that can be another possible answer to Margaret’s question, “…Serena Williams coming back to tennis after four years. Do you know why or what happened?

It could be that she wants her children to be able to see her holding court and holding serve, doing the thing that made her a legend.

Thanks as always for making the Squawk community so much fun and so insightful!

HAPPY FESTA to those who celebrate. Borahae!

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey and Sarah

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