Mailbag for January 17, 2025
SNL the artform, on Blake and Meghan's payroll (?), gossip and the banning of TikTok, the impact on business of The Squawk, and what's the best film festival
Dear Squawkers,
What a fucking January. And we’re only halfway into the month. Seriously, like from a strictly gossip perspective, it’s been a long time since I’ve been doing this job that there’s been this kind of a start to the gossip year, and to be clear, I just mean gossip, not news and events, but strictly gossip – from lawsuits flying back and forth to Jessica breakups and hard launches by couples with questionable timelines, plus Timothée Chalamet disrupting what an Oscar campaign is supposed to look like…
Is this the pace we’ll be keeping all year? If so, please know that we’re up for it but that we’re not going to be rushing out our coverage either. In times like these, we’ll try to stick to our mantra: it’s better to be right than to be first.
But my overall point is that it has been A LOT. And, well, when it gets to be a lot, you might say that we are in a gossip fever. And the only prescription … is more cowbell.
Sorry, SORRY. I’m cringing as hard as you, but I had to. Because what I’ve been obsessed with all week is the SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night docuseries that just premiered on Peacock. Here in Canada, there is no Peacock. In a panic yesterday I asked Joanna… WHERE ARE WE WATCHING THIS THING?!
For you Canadian Squawkers, we have an answer: the doc will be on Showcase as of today. This is exactly what I need for the weekend.
If you’ve been reading LaineyGossip over the years, you’ve heard me say this before – you will never read on our site that SNL should be cancelled, that we’re over it, that it’s irrelevant. Speaking for myself, since I work in television, I will always argue in favour of live TV as an artform, an essential artform that needs to be preserved. Speaking for Sarah, who has a background in comedy, if I may, even if it’s not funny all the time, live network sketch comedy needs to be preserved. Also, as a general principle of life, even when it’s bad, a show like SNL should be preserved. Because perfection is not possible all the time. Because the point is to keep trying. Because one of the best parts of SNL is that, yes, sometimes we get to watch people bombing within the first five minutes and they have to keep going knowing that they just bombed. We don’t watch it as bloodsport, not to mock or to relish in someone else’s misfortune, but as a showcase of artistic and creative resilience. Future generations of artists need this. Our children need this. For fuck’s sake, the people on Instagram and TikTok need this – because on those platforms, they can record and delete as many times as they want before they get it right and edit and filter and post and eliminate all their mistakes..
What people enjoy about live sport – the fumbles, the turnovers, the own goals, the bogeys, the double faults, alongside the recoveries, the steals, the headers, the birdies, and the backhands down the line – can also be applied to live sketch comedy the way SNL can deliver a skit like “More Cowbell” after a series of clunkers. The exhilarating part of live sport and sketch on television is the spontaneity and the possibility.
So this documentary? This is not just for comedy nerds, it’s for TV nerds, it’s for WORK NERDS. Take me inside that writers’ room which, at this point in the history of television, is its own mythology. Those of us who love SNL and have read all the books, mainlined all the oral histories, already know how competitive it is, how complicated, how it can be demoralising one week and the best thing that happened to you the next. But now? Now we get to see it in this doc. Filmmakers were apparently allowed a week’s access to the room and former writers and cast members speak candidly about what it’s like to pitch and to listen to other pitches, stacking your ideas up against those who are vying for one of those precious spots on the show that week.
This is the kind of Show Your Work that gets me horny. This is why I was so fucking desperate to track down where SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is airing in Canada. Why I was about to lose my shit if it wasn’t available and why it was such a relief to know that it is.
Maybe this can be one of our Sunday live chats in the coming weeks? We put the question out there in the last mailbag about the Sunday scaries and whether or not an occasional live chat and doing it over a live watch might help those who need some cozy before the work week. So more formally, Yes or nah?
Question from Sandy via DM:
How much is Blake Lively paying you? It’s so obvious you’re on the payroll for how you keep defending her when everyone knows she’s shown her true colours for years. Even you said so but I guess everyone has a price and your price is your credibility. You look like a joke, Justin Baldoni came with all the receipts! I’m waiting for an apology but I know you’ll never give one.
Lainey’s Answer:
The Meghan Markle haters are the same. It’s always “you’re on the payroll” if I’m not joining the pile-on. For the record, Meghan isn’t paying me, and neither is Blake Lively but I wish they were, I wish anyone was, LOL, because it’s hard out here for a blog on the American oligarchs’ internet.
The truth, if you’ll believe it, is that I’m defending Meghan and Blake for free, if you can even call it defending. Like if you’ve read any of our posts about Blake Lively pre-August 2024, pretty sure you know that she’s never been my favourite. But none of what was going down last summer was a proportional response to her fumbles. The algorithm was looking sketchy, it is still looking sketchy.
I included this (rhetorical) question not because I want to write any further about the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni situation but to highlight a response that’s becoming more and more common online, not just in entertainment news and to be honest, I stress about it every day, about the increasing lack of nuance in online discourse, combined with a lack of trust in legacy media, combined with the rise of Bravo stars and influencer culture borne out of the Kardashians, haha.
Is this the truth or is it motivated by the villainous mainstream media/Hollywood elites/scientific community, whoever it is that people want to doubt? Are they really dating or is it a fauxmance? Are they really fighting or is it a storyline to promote the new season? Are you friends with Meghan and Harry and Blake and Ryan?
On the other side of it, this is also complicating reporting. I’m getting more and more tips from new contacts claiming they’re Hollywood insiders with the “real” story about a certain celebrity, and it’s a takedown that happens to benefit another celebrity. And trust me, it’s not that I haven’t had to deal with fakes before – Emily our site manager was keeping a file for years of a person who would reach out on a regular basis claiming to be Justin Timberlake’s secret wife and mother of their child, and they would send doctored emails and text messages from him, and even photos of a kid who did kinda sorta if you squinted look like a young Justin, it was wildddd. (Em might jump in on the comments on this one because she had to screen most of them.) In the past, though, those fakes were isolated to, possibly, people who were unwell, more concerning than sinister. These days, the fakes feel nefarious, motivated by a concerted effort to seriously harm a person’s reputation.
It's been going on for a long time between fans of Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber. I saw it come up when Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde were dating. And it’s especially relevant this week as Xiaohongshu has exploded in popularity because Chinese social media is overrun with fan wars, as supporters of certain actors have been known to pour money into digital campaigns to ruin the ratings of shows of other actors and/or shadow banning positive reviews and/or vice versa, intentionally manipulating data to boost their faves. The result, of course, is chaos. And factionalisation.
If you’re a fan of someone, any reporting that is mildly critical must be compromised. If you’re not a fan, any reporting that is not critical enough is also compromised. So for us, on our site, as analysts of pop culture, it’s become that much more challenging to ask people to engage with us in thoughtful dialogue and responsible gossip with people like Sandy unless Sandy is willing to accept that I have no stake in Blake, I just don’t want to contribute to the mess. But Sandy probably isn’t reading this anymore.
Question from Nicole:
Maybe it’s too early to know, but if TikTok is banned in the U.S., how will that impact social influencers? And is the unreliability of gossip and swarm attacks, such as what happened to Blake Lively, one of the features of TikTok or because of its users.
Lainey’s Answer:
I’m not an expert, I say this purely on observation, but I think it’s a combination of both – how TikTok and all algorithms work and also how users behave. Which means it’ll happen on any platform. It was already happening on Twitter before TikTok anyway. And so maybe the bigger conversation is about A.I. and how it responds to bias, because the computer learns by observing and cataloguing behaviour, right? If our society is inherently racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, all the phobics, all of that is being absorbed into the matrix and those behaviours are being digitally learned, literally being passed on from flesh and blood into code.
The impact of TikTok potentially being banned on social influencers, then, is that… well… sorry to come through with a big old “duh” here but they’re already finding new places to go. And also, if you recall, three years ago, TikTok skewed a lot younger. It’s always the youth who find the newest social media platforms. That’s how it was with Instagram before TikTok, and then all the olds went to IG so the young went to TikTok and now the olds are all over TikTok while the young have been hiding out happily back on Snap. But also, all the talk about TikTok has the effect of downplaying the ongoing power of YouTube. There is some reporting that suggests that kids and teens actually use YouTube more than TikTok and with influencer videos on TikTok getting longer and longer, especially the “gossip analysis” videos, YouTube will always be a place where they can share their (uninformed) theories about Luigi, Diddy, and whoever else it is that’s fueling their conspiracy juices.
Question from Patty:
When more tabloidy publications, like Life&style post a story, do they use creative writers? They wrote a story of Tom and Zendaya's wedding plans, which to me seem to be pure fiction. Plus, Tom and Zendaya's circle is pretty tight, I can't see any one being the source for that article.
Lainey’s Answer:
I guess all writing is… creative… on some level? So I don’t necessarily think that tabloid writers all have an MFA, it’s more an emphasis on the “creative” over the actual “writing”. As in the fabrication of it. They’re selling an idea – whether it’s what Tom and Zendaya’s wedding might look like or when Travis might propose to Taylor Swift…
My understanding is that they work backwards. What does the audience want to hear – and you will note, it’s never what they “need” to hear, it’s what they “want” to hear. So in that sense it’s a violation of a principle of storytelling, what Professor Duana laid down at LaineyGossip all those years ago: good storytelling is about giving the reader/viewer what they need and not what they want.
Tabloid writing is the opposite. Which is why it undermines good gossip. We are all predisposed to want the juiciest, most scandalous, most extra version of a celebrity story, even if it’s not necessarily true. But the truth about any given celebrity situation can be… boring. Sometimes the news is no news. Travis hasn’t proposed, Tom and Zendaya have yet to plan the wedding, they’re too busy. Kylie is not pregnant. But you can’t fill a page with boring – even though it would be better for the integrity of the gossip industrial complex. So you have to make up a story or dress up the boring in bullshit nothingburger details.
Question from ACJ:
A wondering for @LaineyGossip and @Jacek (but maybe mailbag?)…
So I was one of a few folks here who said some version of “where’s Duana” in all the chat about the Mahomes family naming choices. THEN, I went to the site and saw that Duana was right there posting the article that of course she would write, right where it should be.
Except, I don’t start at the site anymore. I am here scrolling daily, and maybe make it to the site 2 or 3 days in a week? As a result, I had missed the very content I was asking for, and I wasn’t the only one.
For a business, is this great news, bad news, or no news? Obviously I’m paying to be here so yay income. On the other hand, if I am part of a trend that means fewer eyeballs on the site, that must have downward impacts on $$ for ads there.
I’m VERY curious about what story the data is telling and then the stories here - I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one whose Lainey habit has shifted over the last year+. And then some future-casting based on analysis of said data?? Lord, I’d be giddy.
Signed, SYW Nerd
Related Question from IN:
Related but more general Q: How is The Squawk going from your POV as publishers? I think we all agree that the quality of discussion is top-notch, but how does it stack up against the hopes / expectations you had at launch?
What has surprised you the most about The Squawk?
Jacek’s Answer:
Putting these two together because the answer to IN’s question about how it’s going and our biggest surprise about The Squawk might go hand in hand with ACJ’s mention that they are sometimes forgetting to visit LaineyGossip, the main site, because the Squawk is so engaging.
We love the fact that so many of you keep each other entertained and engaged even during times when the site is dark. We’re SO happy that we’ve developed such a tight-knit community here that we can take a few days off over the holidays, for instance, and you all keep squawking. It’s everything we hoped for when we launched this forum. What’s maybe surprised us is how respectful the discussions have remained, and how little moderation we’ve needed to do. You don’t just keep each other in check, but it’s at the point where it’s not even necessary most of the time. If disagreements arise, most often it’s in a way that you might confront a colleague face to face and not behind the anonymity of a Twitter handle where there is zero recourse for being a fucking asshole.
From a publishing standpoint and on the surface, ACJ’s point about forgetting to visit the main site is, honestly, a bit concerning. As you say, fewer eyeballs on the site means fewer ad $$. And truthfully, we need both ad revenue and Squawk subscriptions to make things work long term unless the ad ecosystem miraculously heals itself, or paid subscriptions to The Squawk grow to the point of replacing the ad revenue we generate on LaineyGossip.com. For you SYW nerds, we’d need to convert at least three quarters of our mailing list subscribers to become paid subscribers for that day to come where we don’t need to rely on any ad revenue to sustain the site. Some of those costs would disappear if LaineyGossip became The Squawk and we only relied on subscriptions, but that’s a ballpark number.
And maybe that day will come, especially if the ad tech industry, marketers, online publishers, legislators, and other stakeholders in the online publishing ecosystem don’t find a viable way to balance end user privacy with fair online ad rates that don’t send publishers seeking alternate ways of funding their sites to cover their costs. And if people continue to expect content to be “free” and actively take steps to prevent sites from being able to monetize their visits.
The Squawk has been one of those tools for us. Of course, we didn’t launch The Squawk just for the revenues it would generate, because we truly did need a place where the readers we spoke to each day could speak with us and each other. But since its launch, it has become a critical piece of our monthly revenues. So we appreciate the fact, ACJ, that you’re willing and able to pay for a Squawk subscription even if you don’t have time to visit the main site. If more people out there chose a handful of sites that they visit that they would directly support via subscription, we wouldn’t see so many publishers shutting down. But we also understand that, between those subscriptions, Netflix and the million other streaming services, and all the other entertainment costs out there, we’re competing for dollars from tight wallets. And people need to choose. We’re just really really grateful that those of you who do have paid subscriptions can do so and visit The Squawk as you do. Thank you!
Lastly, the future-casting you ask about? For LaineyGossip and The Squawk? I can totally see a point where we do the majority of our writing behind a partially paywalled site, whether that’s LaineyGossip.com or The Squawk, where paying subscribers get all the content, chat features, live blogs, etc, and some stuff remains unlocked for new visitors and non-paying subscribers. Even sites like CNN are now starting to run subscriber only features. That trend will likely continue. We aren’t there yet, having kept LaineyGossip and The Squawk complementary but separate, but this seems to be where the internet is heading unless things change.
Lainey’s Answer:
Echoing everything Jacek just said but want to add one thing…
As writers, for all of us on the team, we put a lot of work into every sentence at LaineyGossip on a daily basis. I, alone, produce around 3,000 words a day there. And probably 6,000 – 7,000 words a week here at The Squawk. Sarah pours so much creativity in her reviews, and as one of her biggest fans, I inhale every word, and I can see the thought and the care that goes into her analyses. Writers want to be read. We want to reach as many people as we can. We also understand that you only have so much time, and if you only have time for The Squawk, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, we are so grateful.
Would it help if, in the daily chats, we post links to every article that goes up at LaineyGossip as soon as it goes up? Would that work as a heads up/reminder?
Question from Regan Rothery:
My question is about click rates. I honestly have no concrete idea how they work and I really want to be a good steward for the site because LG has truly given me so much over the years (I became a daily reader when Katie left Tom - your coverage of that was 🤌🏽🤌🏽🤌🏽)
I don’t watch reality TV (not above it, just never got into it and I never feel like I can start something unless I go back to the beginning which can be years for reality tv!), but I love Stephanie’s articles & writing. I know she writes non-reality stuff, and I pore over those, but if I don’t click on the reality recaps is that affecting her hit rate? Or LG’s as a whole? Sometimes I’ll click and just scroll to the bottom in hopes that counts for something, but does it matter? I’m on the site daily.
Jacek’s Answer:
We don’t police click-through rates on articles on LaineyGossip. I will occasionally check what’s doing well, of course, but leave editorial decisions to Lainey and Sarah. Maybe if we’re squeezed down the road a bit more, we may have to get more selective about what we write and rely on that data to a greater extent, but we really do try to put the writing first.
If you’re one of those folks that does click through to an article just because you know it took work to write it and a few ad loads will help pay for it, thank you! We’re thrilled that you’re thinking that way and won’t tell you not to.
As for clicking on ads, ad networks have explicit rules about not actively encouraging readers to click on ads just for the sake of clicking and supporting the site. We try to run a good balance of ads per page so that we don’t dilute the quality of the ads you see and the attention that they compete for. Our aim is for the ads stand on their own. If you see something you like that’s relevant, by all means, check it out. But don’t feel you need to click just to help. Most of the time, the ads are paid out based on views anyway, not clicks.
Question from Jen:
I am so curious about your film festival experiences. What has been the best one you've attended and why? What fest is totally overrated? And what is your dream film festival to attend?
Lainey’s Answer:
So I’m going to be a homer here – the best festival is TIFF. For obvious reasons, being that I’m Canadian and live in Toronto. But also, selfish and practical reasons. I don’t have to travel to work at TIFF. (Sarah does, but selfishly, too, this means I get to see her!) I can cover the festival and it’s my home base, which makes things that much more convenient. Also, since TIFF is in Toronto, and our show, ETALK, is Canada’s entertainment show, there’s more access, and I know enough people in the industry, in our city, where I can maximise resources. And it’s just fun to be able to hang out with all our colleagues in the business, in Canada, like an annual two-week camp.
The other festivals I’ve covered are Cannes, multiple times, and also Sundance, multiple times. I’ll say straight up, my personal experiences at Sundance haven’t been great. To be fair, I was covering Sundance in the late 2000s and early 2010s when it was a swag fest, at the height of criticism about free shit ad gifting suites and parties overshadowing independent film. And the level of Hollywood ego that was being splashed around in that era was obnoxious and unpleasant. I’ve heard that’s changed, a little, so the vibe might be different. But it wasn’t all that fun in those times. Also, frankly, as a non-American reporter at an American festival, we were sometimes treated like shit, looked down upon by Hollywood publicists and agents which seems antithetical to the independent spirit. Again, maybe that’s changed because Sundance did do some soul searching about a decade ago and they may have course-corrected and I just haven’t seen it up close.
Cannes, on the other hand, is perfect for the splash. This has never been a festival that’s pretended to be small, LOL. Which is why I fucking loved all my Cannes experiences, even the time I was there and broke my arm and had to have surgery in the middle of the festival. Because I was in Cannes righhhht before social media went nuclear, and during the rise of Twitter. So I got to see it, up close, in the party scene, before everyone had an iPhone and posted everything in real time. Celebrities weren’t as worried then about being caught doing whatever. They moved more freely. Influencers weren’t all over the place. I remember being at the Hotel du Cap terrace having drinks as George Clooney, Daniel Craig, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hovered nearby, it felt like a private party after the Oscars, and it was so casual, they were so unguarded, and that could never happen again now.
That was during my first few times at Cannes which then became the Twilight years. I was at a party where Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were making out. The paps were all over them but, again, the social media situation wasn’t what it is now. So, sure, they were cagey but not *that* cagey. And while celebrities are still excessive now when they go to Cannes, they’re much more self-conscious about the way they move around than they were, say, in 2010. Sorry to sound like a gross namechecker but my point is none of the above could ever happen today.
Dream festival? The Busan International Film Festival. With all the great filmmaking coming out of the East, and Korea in particular, more western media should be covering Busan. I’ve never been to the Venice Film Festival, but I would choose Busan any day over Venice.
Sarah’s Answer:
Shameless self-promotion: I'm a programmer for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, held every May at the historic Music Box Theater. It's my favorite fest because I have a say in what we play, including films like Thelma, Sing Sing, and Emily the Criminal. Cities around the world have local fests like this, and while they don't have the red carpets and glitzy premieres of Cannes or TIFF, they do share a commitment to bringing world class cinema to fans. So check out your local film fest, if you haven't already, and if you're in the Chicago area, see you May 2-8 at the Music Box!
Thanks as always for hanging with us here. It’s amazing to see the chats popping off with more and more comments week after week with everything from debates on celebrity stories to recipe sharing and more. This is the good that gossip can do!
Keep squawking and keep gossiping,
Lainey, Sarah, and Jacek
If it wasn't so sad and scary how delusional people can be, it would be more entertaining to receive some of these messages. What strikes me most is not often the content of the messages but how fucking long and detailed they are. It's intense! My hate mail folder is a dark place.
Shout out to everyone else who's been accused of being on some celebrity's payroll because we said misogyny was bad. The disheartening reality is that there's way more money in hating women than in defending them. See that blogger Megan thee Stallion is suing for allegedly working with Tory Lanez to smear her. Or the "body language experts" and Etsy merch sellers who made bank from attacking Amber Heard. Or the UK journalists whose entire beat now is just anti-Meghan crap. I won't be surprised if we suddenly see a lot of people become full-time Lively haters, not because they're part of some nefarious scheme but simply because it's easy money and attention.