Mailbag for March 8, 2024

My crazy Oscars schedule, bad SNL career moves, a changed view of gossip (?), Sarah's two jobs, and come back for our Oscars live chat!

(ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Dear Squawkers,

My parts of this mailbag are written in-flight on Thursday morning, I’m heading to LA for Oscar weekend with ETALK so I’ll begin with the Show Your Work about what this weekend will look like. Because even though I’ve covered the Oscars before, we’re actually launching a whole new show, which has totally changed my standard Oscar workflow.

In total, our team will be producing three shows for broadcast on this trip, and at least 25 digital posts across multiple social media platforms. This is a huge amount of content for a small team and a testament to the first class – and underrated! – talent we have here in Canada, where budgets are considerably smaller in comparison to our American counterparts. On top of my duties for television, I of course also have my LaineyGossip responsibilities. So the next few days for me are all about time management, which is why I’m writing this now, in transit, instead of tonight which is when I usually work on the mailbag. But I’m running as soon as I hit the ground in LA, and it doesn’t stop until the end of the night. Here’s a loose day-by-day breakdown of Oscar weekend.

Thursday

We are hoping to be at the hotel around noon and the team will have to set up our production office where we’ll have a quick kickoff meeting before I start getting ready. I am hosting the Consul General of Canada in Los Angeles’s “Canada and the Oscars” event which starts around 5pm PT and goes until 9pm-ish. As of 7am Thursday morning I still haven’t had time to review my notes, so I’m anxious. This event will be over by the time you read this so… I hope it went well?

Friday

Call time is 430am PT for makeup and on the Oscars red carpet for 5am for tech check – at this point it’ll be 8am in Toronto and I’ll be doing a series of morning television and radio hits to promote our Oscar programming.

That goes for an hour, and then we start shooting the Friday episode of ETALK at 8am PT. Because of the three-hour time difference, we need to feed the footage back to Toronto early enough so that our team at home can cut and edit to get it to air. Once the show wraps (one show down out of three), I switch to digital content for our brand partners for an hour or so and then it’s straight into research meetings. If a window opens up, I may head out for a walk or take a nap before we go over to the house in the Hollywood Hills from where we’ll be broadcasting live Sunday night for ETALK After The Oscars. We have never done a live after show before, so it’s both thrilling and crazy fucking stressful because in Canada they’re coming to us, literally, as soon as the Oscars broadcast is over. That’s millions of viewers.

This will be our first in-person walkthrough of the venue so our camera crew will start to get comfortable with the location and I think we’ll do a very preliminary test of the lines because the control room for the live broadcast of this show is actually in Toronto. All of that will take us right up to dinner so I won’t be back in my hotel room until probably at least 9pm PT, at the earliest.

It's a long day, and I say this now: I should get to bed. But, um, I’ve been known to have intentions of going to bed and then not going to bed if there’s a party – even though it would be a very bad idea to go to the party! Because Friday night is pretty much the only night to get a respectable amount of sleep.

Saturday

Call time 830am PT for hair and makeup. Shooting digital content in the morning, then reporting to the red carpet and our exclusive ETALK balcony position by 1230pm for tech checks and rehearsals. We spend most of the afternoon running through pretend scenarios – and most of the live outlets are doing the same on this day. The Academy actually has volunteers walking the carpet holding up signs, like “Halle Berry” or “Oprah” for crews to practise what it might be like the next day.

Oscars red carpet setup for the 96th Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland and the Dolby Theatre (AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/Shutterstock)

Once we wrap rehearsal at the Dolby, we’re back to the house in the hills to rehearse the after show. We’ll start with another round of audio and tech checks but we can’t actually tech check any visuals until the sun goes down because our after show is happening after the Oscars, somewhere between 7-730pm PT/10pm-1030pm ET so we need to get as close to the same light (or darkness) as possible…and this is complicated by the fact it’s spring forward this weekend, and the clocks are going forward, lololololol fml, sleep what?

Once our director is satisfied with the lighting, I’m booking it back to the hotel because after Saturday, I don’t get to sleep until Tuesday night. The goal then is to be asleep by 10pm PT. Meanwhile, many of our producers will likely still be working to make changes after the day’s rehearsals etc and getting all the elements sorted for our big show day.

Oscar Sunday

Call time 430am PT, hair

6am PT, makeup

8am PT, get dressed

It may sound ridiculous to schedule getting dressed but most of the dresses you see at big events like the Oscars are involved and sometimes delicate. I have two looks for the Oscars this year because we’re shooting on the red carpet and then later at the house in the hills for the after show. My red carpet dress is 40 lbs, fully beaded, and I cannot get her on by myself. She’s spectacular, in my opinion, but she’s a tank!

9am PT, photos and digital shoots on Oscars red carpet

Noon, lunch and touch-ups

1pm PT, locked into positions on red carpet and balcony

130pm PT, tech check

2pm – 4pm PT, shoot Oscar red carpet arrivals

As soon as the red carpet is over, we’re busting our asses to the car, in LA Oscar day traffic, to get up to the hills. The actual Oscar show will have started so this means we’ll be streaming the show en route so as not to miss anything that happens.

At the house, it’s a short break and then, while continuing to watch the telecast, we’re doing hair and makeup changes and discussing with producers what we want to talk about during the after show. Right now, the show has been loosely blocked, based on multiple projected scenarios, but we don’t really know what we’re talking about until it happens. This is why live TV is so exciting – you can put together a rundown, but you also have to be prepared to throw it out entirely.

Just before 7pm PT, it’s time to get mic’ed and final tech checks because as soon as the Oscars are over, expected to be at around 715pm PT/1015pm ET, red light, three…two… one… we are live.

The after show wraps at 8pm PT/11pm ET. Two out of three shows down. A quick celebration for me, and then I’ll rush back to the hotel (and hope that traffic isn’t so fucked at that time that the car can get me from the hills back to Hollywood). At this point Sarah and Duana will have already mapped out the coverage on LaineyGossip for the site on Monday. I’ll get my assignments from them while I’m heading to the hotel and by the time I get back into the room, Duana will have the cue cards taped to the wall so we can rip them off one by one. And the writing begins…

Until 3am at which point I have to switch back to TV because my call time for hair and makeup on Monday morning is 4am PT. We head back to house in the hills at 6am PT for a script read-through and we started shooting links for Monday’s episode of ETALK at 7am PT. Monday’s ETALK is supersized, a one-hour special that includes all the footage and interviews from the night before with fresh new intros and show bumps and throws to commercial that we have to film from the house to stitch all the coverage together. That’s why we call it “links”. We need to feed the links back to Toronto by 11am PT latest so that our Toronto team can package the show. Then and only then are we fully wrapped on Oscar weekend, on the television side. On the LaineyGossip side, right now I’m hoping to be finished the writing for LaineyGossip before I shoot Monday ETALK but if I’m not, I’ll tie up my posts once filming of Monday’s episode is complete…

And that’s how I’m hoping it all work out. I’ll let you know whether or not these were realistic plans!

Now to your questions.

Question from CD: Are there any examples of SNL hosts for whom it turned out to be a bad career move? I admit that I first wondered this during Jacob Elordi's show, since I came away with the impression that he has a more limited range than I expected.

Lainey’s Answer:

The first name that popped in my mind here is… Adrien Brody.

The year was 2003. Adrien Brody had just won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Pianist. He was 29 years old and remains the youngest to win in that category. Halle Berry will remember it forever as the moment she called his name, and he went up there and decided to claim her mouth as part of his win. Maybe that should have tipped us off for what would happen next?

Just six weeks later, on May 10, 2003, Adrien Brody hosted Saturday Night Live with musical guest Sean Paul. I know we all know what he did, but when was the last time you watched it? It’s not that I want to make you uncomfortable but, like, the question here is examples of SNL hosts for whom it became a bad career move and… well… this is among the worst. Time, however, can dull emotion, even cringe. So if you’ve forgotten how bad it was, here’s the reminder. You know what I forgot? I forgot that it went ON AND ON AND ON AND ON, OH MY GOD.

That’s your reigning Best Actor Oscar winner, at the time, imploding on live TV. Did it ruin his career? I mean, no, Adrien Brody has continued to work but definitely not at the same level. Consider the fact that Nicole Kidman was the Best Actress Oscar winner that year, she is six years older, and in the two decades since, she has had a much more illustrious career, comparatively, and how often can we say that about women and younger men, in general?

Is Adrien Brody getting leading roles anymore? He’s been cast in some high-profile projects but it’s mostly supporting parts. So I do think a lot about the Sliding Doors of Adrien Brody’s career and image, because he’s not all that popular and seems to have peaked at Oscar before the age of 30 and it hasn’t been the same since.

Question from Rachel: Along the lines of the ongoing "inside baseball" discussions, does the team at LG get pitches from publicists or other celebrity team members to cover certain things? or unsolicited tips that you have to verify/corroborate? I know Lainey has said in the past that any tip received has to be corroborated by at least 2 reputable sources, I think, but I'm wondering how inundated your inbox is with story ideas from those surrounding the people on the site. Conversely, do people ever email and tell you NOT to cover a certain thing?

Sarah’s answer:

I don’t know what Lainey’s inbox looks like on a daily basis, but I imagine it must be catastrophic, because mine is a daily disaster. I do get some emails that come directly from publicists. I asked Stephanie to include a specific item in a post this week because a publicist had reached out about something, and I wanted to do right by someone who’s done right by me in the past. For me, it’s usually stuff around movies and TV shows, because most of the direct contacts I’ve made come from being a critic and a programmer on a film festival (Chicago Critics Film Fest), but publicists like to gossip, too.

And yes, sometimes a potential source reaches out directly. There are a very select few I trust implicitly, they’re all people I know in my personal life. There are others I have a lot of faith in that I’ve built relationships with over the years, people who are who they say they are, and whose info always checks out. And then there are the lunatic fringe who send bonkers emails—those are easy to spot and go straight in the trash. I do get a lot of unsolicited emails, but I have to look at every one, because some good sources started out as unsolicited email correspondence, and you don’t know until you check which is which.

I’ve only ever been asked not to cover something specifically once, and it came from a person I know who happens to be famous, and it was a sensitive family matter. Honestly, I was a little offended they even had to ask for discretion! But that’s what fame does—it makes people paranoid. Maria has mentioned “rogue relatives” before, everyone’s got one and they can do a lot of damage to a person’s ability to trust their friends and family.

And yes—2 sources. I always say I’m not a journalist, but I’m also not an asshole. I’m going to verify any information I’m given, even from trusted sources. If I can’t get independent verification, I’m not going to run with it, I might just back pocket it and see if that info ever lines up with anything that leaks into public awareness.

Also, and this has been happening more and more lately—I’m starting to get pitches from AI companies. Like, they’re clearly auto-generated topics based on buzzwords, lobbing bad ideas directly into my inbox. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do less than write an article based on a math equation’s idea of what humans find interesting. I know truly terrible, irredeemably bad writers whose dumb shit pitches I would accept before I take a pitch from my algebra homework.

Question from Josephine: I have a question for Jacek. When Lainey Gossip turned into a place for a more nuanced dissection of gossip and the way it reflects our individual values and our society, did it take any convincing for you to see it that way? Or did you always see gossip that way? Was there a time when you viewed gossip as a frivolous activity that was mostly for women? Was there a journey for you in terms of viewing gossip as social anthropology?

Jacek’s Answer:

I’ve never viewed what we do on LaineyGossip and The Squawk as frivolous, and our transition from the nastier tone of the early days of the site to where we are today, also, has never factored into that. I’ve always seen great value in what we’ve done in a few ways. 

First off, the earliest iterations of LaineyGossip, the pre-website/first newsletter days, will always hold meaning to me in that they gave my then wife of only a year somewhere into which she could pour her creative energy. Some of you who have followed us for a long time will know that the newsletter began when her mom was sick, and Lainey was in between jobs. It was a tough time for her, one of major transition, with lots of travel between Vancouver and Toronto to help take care of her mom, and a new marriage. She had also left behind some close friends having left her job. So when she started the newsletter as a way to connect with them and to editorialize for them the week’s happenings in celebrity, I could see how much joy and purpose it gave her to write and to have her work appreciated, even as a hobby.

Lainey and Marcus in 2004

Years later when the site became less of a hobby and an actual side-gig for her that began taking up too much of her time, I made the decision to leave my career (at the time in telecom, where I met Lainey years earlier) to devote myself full time to the site. So this is another reason to see Gossip as more than a frivolous activity – I was actually going to take part and do so for a living. And have done since. 

As for the tone of the site and its value in the celebrity gossip ecosystem and the role that has played?  Again, not a factor in changing the way I view gossip, but I’m proud of the fact that we’ve transitioned to becoming a little bit more—what’s the word, mature?—about how we critique celebrity. And it has been very gradual. One of my personal pet peeves and where I get extremely defensive (in a way that Lainey can’t) is that I saw that transition over a decade and not as a “reaction” to being called out.

Anyway…not here to revisit that, but all this is to say that my views around the value of what we do never changed as our writing changed. I always knew the value that gossip created in providing people with a common ground for discussion. And I’m so thrilled that The Squawk has enabled us to actively do that and to have you all take part instead of having it be that one-way conversation that it was for years.

I, of course, am a bit biased about my opinions regarding celebrity gossip, and also a bit more exposed to the discussions that take place around it for many of the reasons I mentioned above. I’m not sure your average 40+ year old cis white male would take the time to see it any other way, and many still feel like it’s unimportant. As Lainey has said before, those dudes probably see their TradeCentre shows taking complete guesses at which pending NHL free agent will get moved at the deadline (I’m all over it this week!) as being far more substantial and important than who Zendaya is wearing or why Brad Pitt hasn’t seen his children. But I’m living it, and I also edited the site before we hired Emily, so I probably know a LOT more about celebrity than any of them. But truthfully, it’s more out of necessity. I’m not passionate about the subject like my wife and our writers are. But I certainly wouldn’t throw stones, be it now or in our early days.

I remember years ago my parents and I went to see Lainey deliver her TEDx talk on the sociology of gossip. This was even DURING the early, nastier days of the website. And I watched some university prof-looking dude get up when she was announced and walk down the isle towards the exit. I felt like sticking my leg out. I should have. But to each his/her own I suppose. And why Lainey’s crusade for Gossip continues.

Question from Jean F: I completely forgot that Sarah does other work outside of LG and am now wondering how much time she spends writing for/editing the site. I must be a slow writer because whipping that many words into shape each day would take me hours!

Sarah’s answer:

It does take hours. I’ve never really timed it, but on a day I am editing, it’s probably an average of 6-8 hours to get everything ready. I basically have two jobs. (Jacek = 1 job. Me = 2 jobs*.) It’s almost 8 PM CT and I’ve been working on the site for over an hour already. After I get my draft of this mailbag back to Lainey, I have five pieces to write for LG. If I’m lucky and the words come easy, I might be done around midnight to 1 AM. If I’m not lucky…could be 3 AM or later before I’m done. I sort of think of Lainey and I as opposites—she gets up hella early to start her work for the site, I stay up hella late to do mine. Although I do get up earlier than normal on an edit day to start checking my inbox for pieces from Lainey and the other writers to edit and send to Emily for posting. But generally, I’m doing my work late at night which is why sometimes my writing is unhinged: I’m tired and the caffeine is wearing off. Like right now!

Like all weekend!

(*Note from Jacek - Sarah loves to send me a GIF from (I believe) Game of Thrones that says “YOU HAD ONE JOB” if I ever send her a note that I’ve gotten to her invoice late, for instance, to let you in on our little inside joke)

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We will all be unhinged this weekend: Sarah, Jacek, Emily, Duana, and Lainey… but please don’t ever think of it as a complaint. Oscar weekend is our fucking SUPER BOWL. This is what we chest bump over, this is where we leave it all on the field… now imagine me roaring. Sorry, that was such a corny ass sports analogy. So I’ll just cut out now before I turn you start cancelling your subscriptions.

Join us for our Oscars live chat on Sunday starting at 330pm PT/630pm ET (for paying subscribers). And definitely please read our full coverage on Monday on LaineyGossip.com as we post through the night.

Thank you for your curiosity and your questions and please keep sending them. I’ve banked a few for next week when I’m not so fried and have recovered from the madness of this weekend.

Oscars! Are we ready?!

Keep squawking and keep gossiping,

Lainey and Sarah