Dear Squawkers,
When the Air Mail exclusive first broke last weekend about Jared Leto in which nine accusers, some who were underage at the time, share their experiences about how he aggressively pursued and sexually harassed them, there was a common refrain: “worst kept secret”. A lot of people have known about Jared Leto – so many reporters have been approached with first-hand accounts of the fuckshit he’s done over the years, including me. In my case, I was in touch for a few weeks with the person who reached out as she was trying to decide whether or not to come forward. Ultimately, she chose not to take the risk and appreciated that she had the opportunity to be heard and, most importantly, to be believed.
Back to how many people know, though, and have known. Remember when Dylan Sprouse and James Gunn tweeted about it years ago?
Maybe it’s because Air Mail doesn’t have the circulation of other publications. Maybe it’s because the news cycle is so fucking insane with billionaire pieces of shit and criminal presidents dick swinging and then assaulting democracy. Maybe it’s because it’s the devasting backlash to Me Too and the subsequent assassination of the movement. But, like, not even a week later and Jared Leto is nowhere near the top of the headlines. That he was allegedly grooming girls and behaving predatorially with others was barely a conversation to begin with.
On Wednesday, Variety published a piece about what impact the sexual misconduct allegations might have on Jared’s upcoming projects. He has Tron: Ares due out in the fall and then Masters of the Universe next year. Insiders involved with both movies already had excuses lined up for Variety:
“None of the alleged misbehavior happened on a film set, sources close to “Tron” noted, and no criminal charges or civil suits have been brought against the star. Another insider close to “Masters of the Universe” made similar points.”
And Variety’s report actually ends on this infuriating note:
“One seasoned C-suite executive believes that Leto may benefit from a feeling that the #MeToo movement has lost steam in the current political landscape.
“In this climate, you’d get in more trouble for saying something bad about Donald Trump on the air,” the exec noted.”
You know what might even be crazier though? For whatever fucked up reason, Variety found a way to include Blake Lively in the Jared Leto situation on how to approach promoting his projects while he’s being accused by nine women of being a sex pest.
“There are several playbooks floating on how to reconcile personal crisis with contractually mandated media saturation. Blake Lively decided to hide in plain sight earlier this year, attending photo calls in elaborate gowns to hype her thriller “Another Simple Favor.” Not once did she address her scorched-earth court battle with her “It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni.”
Are they seriously comparing Blake Lively, who alleges she is the victim of sexual harassment, to Jared Leto, who is being accused of sexual harassment?!?!?
Yes. That’s exactly what they did.
I mean…if we’re going to do it, the better comparison, the more relevant and depressing one, is that Jared Leto allegedly sexually harassed AT LEAST nine women. And TikTok and the rest of social media is barely fucking talking about it. Comment sections are NOT blowing up all over about it. He hasn’t had to shut down the comment section on his Instagram – I just checked, I scrolled wayyyyy down on his last post and couldn’t find anything that mentioned the accusations. Only comments from people being all like “I love you, I’ll always support you”.
Blake Lively says she worked with a director who harassed her, and her career is in jeopardy. Jared Leto has been known, for years, to be an alleged predator, even among his peers who actually openly tweeted about it, and everybody shrugs. You think the same people who are posting every day, putting their whole personality into hating Blake Lively and taking her down, are giving the same energy to Jared Leto?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…
As IF.
On that awesome note, let’s get the mailbag!
Question from Nada T:
I'm interested in who Lainey Gossip would consider its target demographic. Are there any plans to try and appeal to a younger audience, e.g. Gen Z? If so, would you ever consider moving into the platforms where these eyeballs can be reached, e.g. Tik Tok? I feel like the subscribers to this Stack are probably millennial, Gen X and perhaps we are the last generations who like to read long form content and engage like this...but maybe I'm wrong. When I first discovered LG, I do recall there being some other gossip blogs I would regularly visit but it feels like a lot of them have folded. Also, has your vision of what The Squawk would be matched the reality of what it is?
Lainey’s Answer:
The target market is…anyone who’s into pop culture and gossip, no matter their age or background. And I agree with you, that the people in this community are those who prefer to read long form coverage and analysis over watching on other platforms. Of course, we’ve thought about complementing what’s on our website and here at The Squawk on other platforms – or I should say we are thinking about how to do it. Because we would definitely not stop writing. And we would always write first. So is it as simple as basically summarising most posts at LaineyGossip.com into 30 second TikToks or Reels? That’s a possibility but resources are an issue.
Sarah and I have already talked many times about how much effort we put into the writing. For me, I’m writing around 3,000 words on average a day at LaineyGossip, and I’m working on ETALK every day. Just this week, as of Thursday, I’ve done SEVENTEEN interviews for ETALK and co-hosted the show three times. I’m also co-hosting today, Friday, and have three more interviews which will bring my total this week to TWENTY. Yes, it was an exceptionally busy week but it’s not ever not busy which means for us as writer-editors, Sarah and I don’t have the bandwidth to work on any videos.
But of course, for business and gossip integrity reasons we’d definitely be interested in having a presence in those spaces. On the business side, it would be great to monetise – digital advertising is a shitshow right now, small independent publishers like us are struggling, we need the cash. At the risk of getting too candid about the state of the site, Q1 this year was the worst in our history because of the mess of the tariffs and all this global economic uncertainty. Which every small business around the world, probably, is struggling with right now. So, yes, we are exploring options.
However, there’s also an equally important, non-financial motivation for me, too. And you’ve heard it from me before: gossip is being degraded, gossip hygiene is disappearing, and at the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I want to get out there on those platforms to hopefully counter that. Because you know what they’re not doing on TikTok? A majority of the content creators who do celebrity gossip don’t source. When we write an article, we link to the sources – The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Vanity Fair etc. We say in our posts that “according to Vulture, this actor walked off the set today, with sources saying that he had a dispute with the director”. They don’t do that on TikTok. They just say, “so OMG, this actor walked off the set today”, it doesn’t matter to them where the story comes from. But it should matter because what if it was the Daily Mail? We distinguish, in writing, between the reputable publications and the Daily f-cking Mail. And they should too…but they don’t. The effect is that everything they say becomes believable. If we were to get on those platforms, we’d have to find a way to better “source” reports while discussing the ramifications of them for the celebrities involved.
And, honestly, there are times when we at LaineyGossip are the goddamn source. I have been sent countless TikToks and Reels where takes from articles on our site – sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s Sarah – have been read word for fucking word and presented as that person’s opinion, it’s enraging. If for no other reason then, I want to be on there to own our own thoughts.
On a happier note, our vision for what The Squawk would be is, well, it’s become more that what we envisioned. I love that you all check in on each other in the chats and are sharing recipes and skincare tips and jokes etc etc. Also, our first live book club chat last weekend, for example, was one of the most rewarding hours I’ve spent online this year, can’t wait to do more of this. Next book will be announced below.
Jacek’s Answer:
I’ll add that until not long ago, we were also reluctant to try different avenues for monetization because we always felt like it would be somewhat of a sell-out to take any and all opportunities. You see it today, sticky videos aside, with what is a pretty clean ad experience on our site. We don’t refresh every ad unit every 15 seconds like a lot of sites do. We haven’t done affiliate links, mostly because in the past, they were more effort than the revenue it produced. We didn’t use anti-ad blockers because we felt like maybe some of those ad blocking visitors would pass our site onto their friends who don’t block ads and it would pay off in the long run. But all this is changing for us, especially as Google and the big platforms face lawsuits and regulations that, coincidentally (?), are affecting the rates they’re charging advertisers and the volumes of traffic they send to publishers.
So over the next few weeks, watch for a few changes in how we do things on the main site. We’re in talks with and anti-ad blocker partner, a new affiliate link partner that looks quite exciting and a potential nice fit with what we do on LG, possibly offering a paid but ad-free experience on LG, and of course, continued efforts to expand The Squawk. Paid content seems to be where the industry is heading and we want to have our foot in that door in case the ad-supported ad business continues to crumble as advertisers move to other mediums and AI ‘overviews’ destroy the open web.
Question from Jill:
This is a (admittedly weird) question for MC. I have been hearing the Nicki Minaj song Red Ruby da Sleeze on the radio a ton recently, and it brought up a looong running question I’ve had. The song samples Lumidee’s Never Leave You and I have never been able to forgot my strong reaction to it back then, which was that to my ear she is off key for the whole song. I have a high level of confusion over this song, it was so popular at the time but my brain just did not get it!! Now that it’s back, I’m left still wondering… what am I missing about this song and why do people love it?
MC’s Answer:
Hi Jill, I’m kind of obsessed with this question because this is something that I’ve wondered my entire life as well. I saw Lumidee live at the Lovers and Friends Festival back in May 2023 and as you can imagine, one of the only songs she only sang was “Never Leave You” and she sang it multiple times because…what else would she sing? To quote the iconic Whitney Houston when she was backstage with her mom during a 1990 concert talking about Paula Abdul (whom I love) – “she sings off key ON the record!”. Oh, and her vocals are just as bad live as they are on the recorded vocals, but the truth is nobody cared, and it was a total vibe.
To answer your question as to why people love it – I think it’s a mix of the song/actual instrumentals being fire and the period it was released in. The song features a prominent dancehall reggae track title “Diwali” that has been sampled and interpolated in many different songs like Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go” and Sean Paul’s “Get Busy”. That rhythm was very popular at the time (think 2002-2003) and it seemed like any song that used it became an automatic radio hit. Given that both Lumidee and Wayne Wonder were basically one-hit-wonders, it only furthers my thought that these songs were exceptions to the rule of needing to have some type of vocal talent.
Now sprinkle the nostalgia attached to it, it seems that Lumidee scored herself a gift that keeps on giving. Had the song come out a few years before or a few years later, I don’t think it would’ve had the same impact it did and likely wouldn’t have even made any noise, because wow the vocals are rough. However, because of nostalgia and the fire beat, this one gets a pass. Besides, for me it will always be the song that plays while Lindsay Lohan is chasing Megan Fox’s car in that Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen scene lol. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia, it can make even the worst of the worst seem iconic.
Question from Lil:
Regarding the BET awards and other Black music specific awards shows, what are your thoughts on the fact rock artists like Lenny Kravitz, Living Colour, Fishbone and many others being excluded from these awards? Shouldn't all black artists be celebrated regardless of the genre they're in? Something I've wondered about since Lenny made his comments about never being invited to the BET awards a couple years ago.
MC’s Answer:
This is a very interesting topic, and I recall Lenny receiving some backlash for his comments and needing to clarify his intentions – but he has a major point here. Using the BET Awards as an example, the genres that are represented in the actual award categories are R&B/Pop, Gospel and Hip-Hop, and it’s been that way since the inception of the ceremony in 2001, and you’ll notice Country and Rock are noticeably absent. When the awards were first started in 2001, it made more sense to leave them out because the ceremony was meant to reflect the videos played on BET at the time. If we look at MTV and the VMAs, they’ve never had a Country category, for example, because Country music was almost exclusively played on CMT. As the years have gone on however, and genre lines are starting to get blurred it becomes more worrisome that the other genres are being left out.
Beyoncé’s genre-defying three-act project has been making a point to reclaim all the genres of music that historically originated with Black culture but got lost in translation over the years. She gave us Dance, Country and rumours are that Rock will be next; and knowing the Queen, all of that is intentional to help open more doors for Black artists to not feel held into a specific genre. Especially since like Lenny said, similar to Country music, Rock n’ Roll is a genre that Black artists were instrumental in creating and they are an integral part of the history.
I do want to give the BET Awards some credit, though. Leon Thomas who performed at this year’s show is a great example of an artist who generally sings R&B but incorporates a ton of Rock elements in his music, even including a rocking guitar solo during his performance that was giving some serious Lenny vibes. Plus, Shaboozey was one of the first Country artists to be nominated for an award, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction. Like you said in your second message, there are SOOOOO many incredible Black Rock artists and just artists in general, regardless of their genre, that deserve their shine on a mainstream stage. I feel that we as listeners have a lot more power than we think we do, so by streaming their music and having these types of conversations we can aid in giving them that platform that they so rightly deserve.
Question from Fernanda:
Sarah, could you explain what each month represents in terms of a film release and what drives the studios' decisions? Which months indicate confidence that a film will receive awards? Which months are considered dump months? Is there any middle ground?
Sarah’s answer:
Well, to quote Oscar-winning writer William Goldman, “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”
That’s even more true now than ever before, as the box office was reshaped in the 2000s and 2010s around Big IP and now, post-pandemic, the rules, insofar as there are any, are being rewritten again. But generally, I think of the movie release calendar like this:
January – The bone yard where films go to die
February – The bone yard where films go to die, except for romantic movies timed to Valentine’s Day, and, randomly, horror movies
March – Crawling out of the bone yard
April – Movies not strong enough for blockbuster season, but better than the bone yard
May – Summer!
June – SUMMER!!
July – SUMMERRRRRR!!!!!
August – Summer hangover
September – Everyone is at film festivals, we hope the film press doesn’t notice whatever mediocre post-summer dregs we dump here (this is why I’m always so skeptical about September releases, traditionally it’s not a month where you release good movies)
October – Spooky with a side of trophies
November – Trophies
December – TROPHIES, with a side of holiday four-quadrant fare (e.g. Marvel is releasing Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars in December 2026 and 2027, respectively)
But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this is very general and ever shifting in a rocky theatrical landscape. Black Panther, for instance, proved with the right film you can make summer money in February. Similarly, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice proved the same for September. Sinners showed people are willing to go to the theater in droves in April. And summer blockbusters bomb all the time. None of this is written in stone, it’s written in sand.
Question from JPH:
In honor of the good BTS news this week, could Lainey share her BTS origin story? How did she first become a fan and what drew her to the group? And maybe, why she thinks they grew to be so, so mega popular?
Lainey’s Answer:
My BTS origin story starts with pandas. I don’t do this much anymore but there was a time in the mid-2010s when my self-soothing consisted of just spending three hours on YouTube watching panda videos one after the other. That’s what I was doing when my racist algorithm decided to serve me a BTS video on the night I fell in love. And I can’t even be mad at it because, well, that’s how I met them.
It was the “Bapsae” dance practice video so that would have been, what, 2016? First of all, the song is a banger, it’s in my top five. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, if you’re ARMY, why this dance practice video is its own legend. They are so stupid and so swaggy at the same time. And that’s the duality of BTS, right? All that personality, all that silliness, all that talent. The choreo is tight as fuck. But they serve it with such character and charisma, it’s not like they’re just going through the motions.
Plus, I was really into how unmanicured they were. No makeup, comfortable clothes. Joon in his pink hat and glasses, Hobi the coolest with his moves, even in those goofy printed shorts. To this day, I still watch more BTS dance practice videos than their official music videos because this is where you can focus on the steps, and how they gradually learn them to the point where it becomes so natural, they can invidualise the moves while still performing as a unit. And play off each other’s energy. If you’re as obsessed as I am, you probably know that they are all acutely aware of each other at all times, that they’ve bonded to the point where they function as a whole organism when they’re on stage. It’s the key to our devotion, isn’t it? That they have developed such trust in each other, in this huge thing they’ve built together, this massive phenomenon that they ARE together – and all of that was achieved, in large part, in those practice rooms during those practice sessions. The “Bapsae” practice, I think, is the closest we have gotten to watching what that might have felt like.
And now, 12 years later, today of all days, it’s FESTAAAAAAAAAAAAA and I am not OK I am NOT OK. I AM NOT OK! Because all of them were there for j-hope today. ALL OF THEM. Yoongi too! The footage of them watching from the suite, hyping up their brother, jamming to all the songs, look at them casually dropping the “Mic Drop” choreo while Hobi was on stage…
Like they can’t wait to get back out there and doing for real as SEVEN (tap to jump to the video)!
We are back, WE ARE SO BACK!
And now to our next book club selection – this one is Sarah’s pick and it’s a Hollywood classic about Hollywood:
The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans, “universally recognized as the greatest, most outrageous, and most unforgettable show business memoir ever written”. This is what it says on the back cover and it’s not just hyperbole.
We are choosing this book because it lines up with what we do at LaineyGossip and here at The Squawk: we study entertainment industry, the ecosystem and the characters who populate it. Even more timely right now with the success of Seth Rogen’s The Studio, a frontrunner for multiple Emmy nominations, and as Sarah has said, Bryan Cranston’s performance is basically an homage to Bob Evans. If you love Hollywood inside baseball, you will fucking love this book. You will tear through this book. No one I’ve met who’s read it has been able to not rip through it, crying and laughing at the same time.
So start reading and we’ll live chat this in a few weeks, around-ish the end of July/early August. A date will be confirmed soon.
Thanks so much for making The Squawk a part of your week – and love to all of you in the Los Angeles area who’ve been sharing your stories and experiences. Also appreciation to those of you who aren’t in LA but are supporting and encouraging and being there in spirit for those who are.
Keep squawking and keep gossiping,
Lainey, Sarah, Jacek, and MC
Variety's descent into clickbait, creeps defence, and dog-whistles has been tough to watch. Between that Leto piece and the weird parade of defensive profiles of so-called cancelled right-wingers like Zachary Quinto and Roseanne Barr is so Daily Mail-esque. The way they treated Rachel Zegler was especially nasty. The monopoly Penske Media has over the trades is a crime (and of course the Penskes are tight with Trump.) Independent gossip and entertainment industry media matters more than ever (and I'm talking about actual reportage, not TikTokers calling themselves body language experts to hate on women.)
i know variety is a trade publication but lately it feels like it’s been a turn into something dangerous and honestly, pathetic. from the campaign against jlo, to the way they’ve reported blake/that rat and now jared leto, maybe it’s time to put them in the same category as a trashy british tabloid 🤭