J.Lo and she's completely different but also still J.Lo
The Friday Post.
Certain figures walk among us with a cockroachian ability to stick around. I, for example, am bound by laws of time and space and shame and a primal curiosity for information that is largely meaningless, like who hired that writer or if that girl I went to school with broke up with her boyfriend. The people I’m talking about, however, might only be bound by the internet speed needed to find drama to create it. If there is foolishness to be done, a day can expand its hours.
One of those people is Jennifer Lopez, briefly Jennifer Affleck. (You know how that turned out.) At her lowest — music video-memoir flopped, tour canceled, skincare line dropped from Sephora retail stores, husband bounced — J.Lo will always emerge. “It wasn’t the summer Jennifer Lopez was hoping for,” reads the lede of an Interview magazine conversation between Lopez and the Comedian Niki Glasser. “After a summer of relative silence, the comedian Nikki Glaser found a Jennifer Lopez who was more than ready to talk.” Relative silence for someone as productive as J.Lo is still pretty Let’s Get Loud, but I digress. Talk that talk, indeed.
J.Lo, as she appears here, is pretty game. This is the J.Lo of The Greatest Love Story Never Told — candid, self-deprecating, and reflective, not the J.Lo of “This Is Me … Now” (singing, obsessed with nostalgia). “I was so devastated to let anybody down, but I just needed to be with my kids and myself and really dig down deep into things that were happening in my life,” she said of canceling the tour. “And I’m glad I did, because it was a really difficult time for me. Probably the hardest time of my life, but it was also the best time because I got to do that work on myself.” She talks about healing from her childhood as as a Leo middle child in a way that makes it seem like her therapist is no longer Dr. Fat Joe. And more on her summer of divorce: “It almost did [take me out for good]. But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, “Fuck, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, God. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a fucking sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.”
The shoot is sickening! You will only style J.Lo one way — something tight and revealing, a gown, some kind of hat, the colors gold or white, a glossy nude lip — but this shoot still manages to show her in a new canvas. Hot, but a little under-done than she normally is, a maximal minimalist. She is a woman in control. Interview … What It Do?
What the Paid List Got This Week
Martin Scorsese talking about Joker is better than anything in that movie or the new sequel.
Long overdue What I Watched list update. A few seasons of RHONY, The Substance, some theater, Seeking Mavis Beacon, and more.
I answered some questions for the newsletter 11 AM Saturday, and I ended up learned something: Of course the first movie I saw in a theater, at approx. six months old, starred Sharon Stone.
If the words “Palatable Gay Robot” don’t mean anything to you, they should: I’m guest starring in Stephen Brower’s one-man show tomorrow in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Buy tickets here :)
More More More
I am not as enthusiastic as everyone else seems to be about the new Adam Brody-Kristen Bell romantic comedy on Netflix, Nobody Wants This. But is it not kinda turn this on … turn it on that the creator, Erin Foster, responds to several critiques that the show only features stereotypical Jewish women by pointing to the hot weed-smoking love interest rabbi character? (Los Angeles Times) Girls alums Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan have joined season two as showrunners.
Kjersti Flaa, the journalist who went viral when she re-shared a video of Blake Lively being curt with her in an interview, went back into her vault to find a video of Anne Hathaway not being game to respond to her inane questions during the Les Mis press tour.
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Press junket days like this are awful for everyone involved, but Hathaway is responding as any person in their right mind should. Interview schticks like “answer this while playing with puppies,” “answer this while eating hot wings,” “answer this in sing-song” are stupid. Sorry! Hathaway emailed Flaa recently to apologize, but Flaa ought to apologize for wasting my damn time.
Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar both passed on headlining Coachella. Good! There is only one person perfect for the job. (Bloomberg)
Diddy’s sex trafficking trial is set for May 5, 2025. That said, per Meghann Cuniff, it’s unlikely it will happen that early. (Associated Press)
We’re so back: Fran Drescher will co-star with Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme. (Variety)
I love the desk in this home! (Big Salad)
’s Megalopolis post is art.
Lana Del Rey on her new husband: “Jeremy is the one and only. And amazing. And we’re very happy.” (The Cut) And more relationship news: Halle Bailey finally dumped DDG, thank GOD. (PopCrave)
I knowwww I have too many opinions about weddings (and this list from The Cut is about cutting wedding costs) but I love a morning-after event, even if it’s just a big spread of bagels and cheeses. (Especially if you’re asking people to travel to an out-of-state wedding! Sending them off to the airport with a little food is nice!) And I think it also curbs a too-crazy party because I know I’ll see everyone the next day lol. (The Cut)
Chilllllllling detail from a Times story about Nicholas Sparks’s “palatial riverfront home” (the suburban luxury of a Holiday Inn at the nicest airport you’ve ever been to) in North Carolina:
That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. I now have to get back to “Brat and it's completely different but it's still also brat,” which is very Party 4 U in the best way.
Having read the post-divorce interviews by both Jennifer Afflecks (Vanity Fair, 2015; Interview, 2024), from a gossip standpoint I wish JLo had gotten into specifics! But by God did she keep the focus on *herself*, no names named!
OKAY I'm on a cut rn (I won't call it a diet), but SIXTEEN PACKETS OF SPLENDA is a psychosis I cannot abide