Mailbag for April 19, 2024
Junket anxiety, the Meghan Markle trope, review schedule management, Kdramas and monoculture, and celebrities who've read us
Dear Squawkers,
I’m heading to a junket this weekend and I feel anxious. It’s the usual anxiety that comes with the job: whether or not I can bring back what I need in such a short amount of time, interviewing two actors at once, with a person counting down from five minutes in the corner, making sure that we get the “serious” answers but can have some fun, too…
All of that is standard operating procedure at a junket. But the anxiety gets cranked up even higher when you like the movie – and I LOVE this movie. So… it’s personal. Personal in the sense that, if I fuck it up, if it doesn’t go well for me at work, will it forever cloud the way I feel about this film that I care about outside of work?! Will this movie that I adore always remind me of how much of a failure I was?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is where our jobs can get weird. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’ve actually never been more engaged, more into my job than I am now. And getting nervous on these occasions is reminder that I’m still invested, deeply invested. The reason I’m sharing this is because we said when we launched The Squawk that this would be the place where we could unpack all the aspects of our jobs that we don’t get to really dive into at LaineyGossip – and this is one of them.
As for what the movie is, I haven’t mentioned it and I’m not going to mention it here not because I’m trying to be coy, but because I’m superstitious. I never talk about a thing openly until that thing has happened. Also, I actually can’t remember what the embargo is, so I need to play it safe even though I’m horny as fuck to talk about it. That should do it, right? I know that’s enough for you to get it?
Until next week, just know that I’m currently stuck on what my opening question will be. And that I often fantasise when I’m writing pieces for The Squawk of opening up a thread before I go into one of these interviews to solicit your input on interview questions. Like an online group work session. Would you be into that? Would you participate? Comment below!
Now to your questions.
Question via email from DY: Lainey, why don’t you ever mention Meghan saying she didn’t know about Harry and the royals before they started dating? You always call celebrities on their bullshit, but this is a blind spot for you. It was a stupid thing to say! And no one believes her – and this is why so many people don’t trust her.
Lainey’s Answer:
This comes up a lot online. The British tabloids are obsessed with fact-checking how much or how little Meghan knew of the royal family and some of their columnists are straight up apoplectic over the “trope that Meghan Markle didn’t google the royals before she married Harry”. It’s become an accusation and/or a character judgement and/or an assumption about her motivations. The subtext being that of course she had to have known about Prince Harry and his family and she’s trying to cover up the fact that she schemed her way into his life, as if it’s that easy.
Do I believe that Meghan didn’t google? No. Do I think she knew more than she’s letting on? Yes. Do I wish she would have just been like, of course I knew who he was, who didn’t? Next question? Definitely.
But… like… do I also get why she wouldn’t? 100%.
Because I’ve been there. I mean I haven’t dated a fucking prince, but I’ve been in a position where I’ve been dating someone and little-white-lied through the early part of the relationship. OMG, yeah, I love camping! I’m totally an outdoor girl! What, no? I’ve never played poker before, please can you teach me?
Meanwhile, have I ever mentioned, dear Squawkers, that I was raised in a gambling den? I was genetically programmed to gamble, there is no card game that I am unfamiliar with. But that’s me, at 22, telling a guy whose name I can’t remember now that I couldn’t tell the difference between a straight, a flush, and a full house. A guy who was definitely NOT a prince, lol. And I know it’s not just me. There are girls out here these days who have never let their partners look at them without makeup on. So Meghan Markle’s gonna walk in there on her first date with this man, a Prince of England, and tell him she’s memorised his Wiki page and suddenly we’re all supposed to be like, how dare you, I would never?
Remember all the girls who changed schools or went to St Andrews on purpose when they found out Prince William would be attending? Including Kate?! We didn’t expect her to go on television and admit on camera that her choice in post-secondary education was influenced by where the future king of England would be matriculating so, like, how is it all that different?
What’s more interesting to me is the fixation on how much Meghan knew or didn’t know about the British royals and Harry. The way, for YEARS now, people have pointed to this like it’s some kind of major character flaw, a red flag. I go back, as always, to the idea that gossip and the way we engage with it says more about ourselves than the people we’re gossiping about.
“Yeah but she lied about not googling the royals” is the “yeah but her emails” equivalent in Meghan’s case. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a conversation with someone about her and we’ll be talking about the heinous fucking shit she’s been through and inevitably there will be someone or someones who’ll pipe up and be like, “yeah but she lied about not googling”, assigning it just as much weight in the situation to actual racism.
Sorry, I don’t get it. There are and will be, no doubt, legitimate things to criticise about both Harry and Meghan as they continue expanding their brand. This google thing, though? When can we get over it?
Question from Kate: My show-your-work-ish question relates to Sarah's answer to Emily G's question (a coincidence of timing here as I caught up on mailbags today!): How do you keep track of the shows you want to watch? How do you decide what to watch when? I have a running list on my phone but whenever I login to a different platform I scroll around for 20 mins and use up watchable time. Please share your watching-time time management expertise!
Sarah’s answer:
Want to watch and have to watch are two very different things. I wanted to watch Under the Bridge, but would I have plowed through eight episodes in three days if left to my own devices? No, but I had to get my review out this week. The truth is, I don’t get to watch much when I want to, I see movies primarily on a preview schedule, I cram whatever TV shows I can fit into my schedule. I try to time reviews to premiere dates because embargos can be fussy and I just don’t have the mental capacity to care, so I just plan on publishing with the premiere, that way I always know I’m safe. Sometimes, though, I miss a premiere, then I have to find a timely place for a review, which is why Shogun’s review is coming with the finale next week (…assuming I get caught up in time).
How do I keep track? Spreadsheets!
This is not a comprehensive list of everything coming out, it’s just a list of titles I think might be interesting to review, schedules of premieres, whether or not I’ve got a screener or screening link lined up, notes for those links because they often have expiration dates, and the status of my review because it helps me hold myself accountable for finishing things if I have a box to check.
There’s really no time management secret. It’s easiest to watch something you already want to watch, like Bridgerton, or The Fall Guy screening I’ve got coming up. When you want to see something, you will find the time. It’s forcing yourself to watch things you don’t care about that gets tricky.
Question via email from Lori: Dear Lainey, I have anxiously been waiting to see if you mention the K drama Queen of Tears? I remember you posted about Crash Landing on You several years ago. CLOY will always be my ultimate favorite, OG K drama. My now 82-year-old mother was the first one in my family to watch any Korean or Chinese dramas. Mostly because she didn’t feel well most days and it took her mind off of feeling bad. She told me there was nothing better in television. It took my husband and I a little bit to catch on. And then we finally watched CLOY. And I’ve almost exclusive watched K dramas ever since. And now we’ve been watching Queen of Tears. It is a hard second on my all-time favorite list, second only to CLOY. I believe it will beat CLOY for top TVN dramas by the finale. It was 2nd on the Netflix global list last week. So anyway, I of course was curious if you’ve watched it.
Lainey’s Answer:
I have not started Queen of Tears because I know this show will fuck me up and I need all episodes to be available before I start it. I love Kim Ji-won SO much, ever since Fight For My Way, and I’ve always wanted to see her in a glamour girl role so it’s not a question of not being interested; it’s that I’m TOO interested and it’s about self-preservation. I would not do well waiting week to week for new episodes.
Thanks for bringing this up though as I’ve been wanting to talk about the ratings. Queen of Tears has been a big hit, not only for its Korean broadcaster TVN but also for Netflix. It’s a Top 10 show around the world, there are a lot more people watching it than some of the other shows that are getting major coverage in western media and yet, that familiar story: non-English language programming that is super popular just doesn’t get the profile, and therefore people don’t think it’s as impactful.
The other day I did an interview with a journalist writing a piece about monoculture for a major magazine. Monoculture doesn’t exist in the same way as it did before, like back in the day before streaming, etc, and 50+ million people were watching series finales. But one of my points was this: how do we define monoculture? Pre-internet and social media, the expression that was used to determine if something was monoculture was “watercooler”. What’s everyone talking about around the watercooler?
First of all, do workplaces even provide watercoolers anymore? I haven’t seen one in a long time, lol. But also, the watercooler has become TikTok or Twitter or Instagram or Snap, if you’re under 16. The watercooler is your algorithm, and the way the algorithm works is that it will just keep feeding you what you like. So for everyone who is a fan of whatever video game or whatever comic book or Taylor Swift or Stranger Things, your feeds are constantly populated with that content – so that it FEELS like monoculture, because all you’re getting exposed to is the thing you care about, creating the impression that everyone cares about that thing, too.
Going back to Queen of Tears on Netflix – if you’ve made it this far in this answer, because I know some people here don’t fuck with K-dramas and skip over it when I write about it – and also Crash Landing on You, there is a HUGE audience for Korean dramas around the world, so much so that, as I have said many times, Netflix is investing $2.5 billion over four years in the Korean market. And I haven’t even mentioned Squid Game, the most watched show EVER on Netflix. But still… in conversations about rare monoculture pieces of content, Squid Game rarely comes up. Why is that?
Question from Louise: I wondered if Lainey has ever met a celebrity who confessed to being a Lainey Gossip reader? Were they a fan? Lainey doing the Bridgerton junket prompted this question as I could totally buy Nicola Coughlan being a gossip lover.
And…
Question from Maggie: This is a fun question and I'd also add - even if you don't have confirmation that a celebrity is LG reader, are there people/circumstances that you feel strongly show someone has read the site? Like the TNT moniker - did Sarah give Travis that idea??
Sarah’s answer:
Nicola Coughlan was recently on Watch What Happens Live. I assume anyone who goes on WWHL is a gossip, don’t you? I’ve never met a celebrity who confessed to reading, but I have had friends/siblings/assistants admit to it. And I do assume there are celebrities who read gossip, if not us, then someone else. In fact, I think most of them are getting gossip from somewhere. Hollywood is an industry, and like any industry, there is always gossip. It can range from professional whisper networks about who is and isn’t good to work with or for, to speculation about who’s sleeping with whom and so on. Hollywood runs on gossip, it always has. The business side favors newsletters like Puck and The Ankler, and I strongly suspect DeuxMoi’s follower list is full of celebrity finstas.
I feel like celebrities used to be less coy about reading gossip columnists, even in the 2000s, everyone read Perez Hilton, and no one pretended they didn’t. But as social media took off, it seems like that kind of open consumption faded. I’m not exactly sure what the link is, but celebrities are a lot more circumspect about gossiping now than they were twenty years ago.
Also, I am TOTALLY taking credit for putting TNT out into the world!
Lainey’s Answer:
I know that publicists read LaineyGossip – because I hear from them, and usually whenever I hear from them, they’re mad about something. Yes, there have been a few occasions when I’ll meet a celebrity, sometimes just before I interview them, and I’ll introduce myself and they’ll be like, I know who you are, been reading your site…and, honestly, though you may be skeptical, it still surprises me. And it’s flattering, obviously. When Emily V Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani came to The Social a few years ago on the press tour for The Big Sick, Emily told me right before we went to air that she was a reader, I think I blacked out because I have no memory of what happened after that. That was a while ago and I haven’t seen her since so I don’t know if she still does but I admit that that really pumped my tires, because Emily is a writer… and that brings me to my bigger point.
Of course I’d love it if all of Hollywood was reading LaineyGossip but it’s when I found out that writers, journalists, authors are reading it that moves me the most. Because I so desperately want to be their peers. This is what happened when I met Marian Keyes and she told me she knows my work, and gave me a gift. It was profoundly meaningful to me but my awkwardness kicked in and I don’t remember if I thanked her properly. Finding out that Jia Tolentino read LaineyGossip was also a mindfuck because I love her so much. Same goes for when Roxane Gay namechecked the site. And, of course, Taylor Jenkins Reid, who Duana and I interviewed on Show Your Work and who I interviewed for ETALK. Which is where she told me that the character Elaine Chang in Daisy Jones and The Six (Daisy’s biographer) was named after me.
I feel kinda like a boasting cunt now that I’ve written that paragraph because I’m worried now that you think I’m flexing. Maybe I am, a little. Maybe… that’s OK? Everyone who’s ever contributed to LaineyGossip has worked so hard, and we’ve been around a long time now, over 20 years, which I still can’t quite believe. Yes, many mistakes were made, the work wasn’t always good, not even close to good, but we’ve never not tried, and we really tried to grow and improve. “You can’t fix nothing” is what Duana taught me about writing…and that applies to LaineyGossip. So year after year we keep posting, even though year after year the digital media landscape gets more and more scary, and we keep trying to fix our somethings, because that’s better than doing nothing. Just a few weeks ago Vice, which owns Refinery29, among other online publications, announced major cuts and that it would “no longer publish stories on its website”. That’s a lot of great writing that we won’t be reading, and it’s a scary development for the rest of us who want to keep writing.
So in that context, to go back to the boasting about writing and the writers who read us, we cherish the fact that what we’ve written here has been read by people who know how precarious writing can be these days. And on that note, we cherish you Squawkers for hitting LaineyGossip and subscribing here, your readership is the best encouragement for us to keep writing, squawking, and gossiping.
Lainey and Sarah
Lainey, I think you have more than earned the flex, imho. Just the sheer amount of work over the amount of time you've been doing this is so impressive. I was actually talking about it with a friend this week, in the sense of life goals and the pursuit of them and how sometimes something like what you did, start a newsletter to amuse your friends, ended up turning into this huge job and now you host Oscar pre shows. That's such an incredible trajectory, truly. And you worked your ass off for it. So flex away.
I've now started saying "But Kate changed schools and her major to History of Art to be in the same classes as William. Plus delayed a year to be there the same time as him. How is that different? Isn't that actually stalking?"
It's fun to watch people head's explode.