And now my watch has ended: My final Love Is Blind post (a review of the reunion) went out on Thursday.
Kate Middleton is doing a Gone Girl.1 Or Kate Middleton is doing a Death Becomes Her.2 Kate Middleton is doing a Saltburn?3 Kate Middleton is doing a Past Lives.4 Kate Middleton is writing her Zola Story (I do actually want to hear how she and this bitch fell out). Melancholia5 has hit Kate Middleton. Kate Middleton is giving Birth.6
I don’t know where Kate Middleton is. Do you know where Kate Middleton is? I have heard the rumors: she’s finally tired of Prince William’s alleged affair with her best friend who looks almost exactly like her and refusing to be trotted out as the perfect wife. Or she’s in therapy, or she’s getting her body done, or she’s taking a break before she’ll be queen. What’s certain is that I know where she isn’t: In this photograph.
When the palace announced her extended absence in January, it was due to a “planned abdominal surgery,” which seemed inconsequential. It wasn’t until late February, when Prince William abruptly backed out of funeral service for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece, that skeptics began to pay attention. “Unfortunately, The Prince of Wales is no longer able to attend the King Constantine Memorial Service this morning due to a personal matter,” the palace said in a statement at the time, without any more detail. “Kensington Palace made it clear in January the timelines of the princess' recovery and we'd only be providing significant updates,” a spokesperson for Kate told E! News a few days later. Kate has been spotted sparingly since.
A woman is entitled to her Liane Moriarty or her Gillian Flynn or Terry McMillan or her HBO prestige drama limited series for which she’ll get but not win a Golden Globe nomination. Maybe Kate Middleton is in the Amazon researching spiders, or she could be getting her groove back. I don’t know! What I do know is that I would love for Kate Middleton to make her triumphant return to the public eye on Nicki Minaj’s Queen Radio. But in the meantime, she needs to hire her royal highness, Taylor Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine.7
I do not keep up with the royals because didn’t we fight a war to not care about them? Even as a casual observer, this month seems like the season finale of the royal family: Kate out of sight, William avoiding his brother at events, King Charles sick, even Camilla’s nasty ass is taking a break. The series of events around the photoshopped Mother’s Day photo was amateur hour: the palace circulates the picture, The Associated Press, Reuters, Getty Images and Agence France-Presse take a closer look and retract it.8 The best the palace can do is “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day,” Kate tweeted. Who is running Kate Middleton’s PR? A melting bowl of ice? A question box on Facebook? An Other Two spec script?
There is only one PR impresario to handle this series of catastrophes. There is one woman for the job. Tree Paine has managed her client through a Grammy sweep and a Super Bowl win in the age stan Twitter — managing this family is light work! At the very least I’ll settle for BP oil spill rep Brynn Whitfield.
Meanwhile — and this has returned her to my good graces — Meghan Markle has started her Goop-lite rollout. Introducing American Riveria Orchard, which is definitely not a new age private school where you can call teachers by their first names.
Per the New York Times, the Amerian Rivieria Orchard trademark application includes plans for a retail store, cookbooks, tableware, and a bunch of spreads and butters. I’m in!
What I asked for: an Usher Tiny Desk residency. What I got: a Justin Timberlake Tiny Desk.
It’s fine. I like his cardigan. His voice sounds … lacking? Even sometimes bad? Highlight is “Pusher Love Girl” and the sequencing is impressive.
But what this man does during “SexyBack” … look how they massacred my boy (“SexyBack,” a perfect song, he was a vessel for God in that recording studio and all that).
Al Pacino Exonerated
While you were getting off your little jokes about Al Pacino announcing Best Picture at the Oscars, the star of nearly every formative movie of my adolescence and that Dunkaccino scene was explaining himself. “I just want to be clear it was not my intention to omit them, rather a choice by the producers not to have them said again since they were highlighted individually throughout the ceremony,” Pacino said in a statement released Monday. “I was honored to be a part of the evening and chose to follow the way they wished for this award to be presented.”
The Non-Newsroom
It has been almost a year since Don Lemon announced, in memorable copied-from-an-email purple font, that he’d been fired from CNN. On Wednesday he announced he’s been fired from whatever devilish arrangement he’d made with Elon Musk to host a “news show” on Twitter.
In a video, taped selfie-style as Lemon strolled down the block, Lemon teased the drama and plugged his new show, which will now live on YouTube. “Hi everyone, Elon Musk is mad at me, and I just put out a statement about what happened between him, me, and the interview that he is apparently sooo upset about.” His statement, posted simultaneously, confirmed that his show would no longer be supported by Elon’s zombie Twitter. “Elon Musk has canceled the partnership I had with X, which they announced as part of their public commitment to amplifying more diverse voices on their platform,” Lemon said. “He informed me of his decision hours after an interview I conducted with him on Friday.”
Lemon is not very good at being a news anchor but very good at creating drama. On the one hand: If I got a $24 million settlement to not have to clock in at CNN, I’d … delete Gmail from my phone? I’d mind my business? I wouldn’t want to work? But on the other: I kinda need Don Lemon’s Veep-Newsroom hybrid sitcom.
Channing Tatum getting the shot
First boyfriend to actually take a flattering photo? Yeah I kinda need him …
Meryl Streep and Martin Short Had a Date Night This Week
The definitely-not-dating Only Murders co-stars went to see Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway.
Bradley Cooper and Gigi Hadid also kissed in public at Antoni-from-Queer Eye’s birthday dinner:
That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. No more Love Is Blind posts for the time being. I unfortunately binged all of Apples Never Fall in one day during a hair braiding appointment and only partly regret it.
(Getting a bob and taking revenge on her cheating husband.)
(BBL.)
(Killing people for no discernable reason because no one in that movie had even the suggestion of a human emotional motivation. And don't say he did it all because Jacob Elordi was hot! Or that he wanted that old house that we only got one fleeting montage of!)
(Reconnecting with an ex right in front of her husband in cuffed jeans.)
(An asteroid mirrors her depression and destroys her world. And/or she's doing the best work of her career only for a man to embarrass her.)
(Kinda losing her mind, but in a posh way. Maybe not this one, though, because Prince William is, by all accounts, still alive and not in the body of a nine-year-old boy.)
All individual links, yup!
The Associated Press said “the source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP's photo standards.”
There are too many men in the media because I’ve read dozens of articles about how the photo has been ‘shopped but not one of them asks how she’s wearing skinny jeans after an abdominal surgery that had her in the hospital for two weeks?????
The royals are a mess but even Tree can't fix it.
Each part of the family have their own press offices and Will and Kate's is a mess. They have been hilariously bad at their jobs forever. But I don't know how anybody can fix institutional incompetence on this scale. The bad advice and poor execution is a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself.
The staff is filled with the wealthy/artisto set who are underpaid because the job is seen as an honour. None of these people know how to work or about modern media. Every time someone who has a CV that looks even mildly impressive comes in, they last like a year or two at most. And you have to believe it comes from the top where you are working for people who believe that God choose them to be super special so they must be right about everything even if they have no expertise in the area. Even our darling Tree couldn't fix this. Good advice can't save a client who doesn't know how to listen.
That being said, the part of the story not being covered is how BP(Buckingham Palace) is letting Will and Kate's office twist in the wind. No support from the crown, not even a brief statement asking for Kate's privacy as she recovers.That is so interesting. William is shitting the bed and Charles' team is veeeeery silent.