This is The Friday Post, Hung Up’s weekly roundup of celebrity mess and miscellanea. If you like this kind of thing, why not subscribe?
“Divorced Man” is like “Florida Man” — they’re always getting into something. I didn’t think it was possible for Armie Hammer to be more divorced. I didn’t think this level of Divorced Man was even attainable. With a Kanye West-Kim Kardashian West divorce imminent, I really thought, “Maybe Kanye will unseat Armie Hammer as most divorced man. Maybe Armie will take a break.” The Instagrams, the tweets, the merry-go-round of dates. Anyway: yes, finally, we will talk about Armie Hammer, those DMs, and the alleged cannibalism.
Some background (and if you know all this, just skip down to the last two paragraphs of this section): This month, an anonymous Instagram account called House of Effie began posting what appear to be Instagram DMs with Hammer while he was in some kind of relationship with her. The messages are kinky and explicit, describing a master-slave relationship. In one message he says, “I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you. Fuck. That's scary to admit. I've never admitted that before.” Hammer started trending on Twitter last weekend with the requisite amount of American Psycho jokes. (You can find more screenshots from the House of Effie account on Daily Mail here and here. It looks like some messages, from the poster, have been deleted before the screenshots were taken. It feels improbable that he’s sending five messages in a row in some of these exchanges.)
The writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, who was seen on a date with Hammer in September and blocked him on IG a month later, tweeted her support to the woman running the House of Effie account, writing: "If you are still questioning whether or not those Armie Hammer DMs are real (and they are) maybe you should start questioning why we live in a culture willing to give abusers the benefit of the doubt instead of victims."
Meanwhile, the House of Effie account continued posting more DMs: selfies of Hammer, a voice text that is ostensibly him describing that many people don’t understand kink, him describing rape fantasies, his requests to meet up. She posted exchanges where she describes being uncomfortable with some of his actions and desires, and says she thinks he pretended to not hear their safe word during sex. In between their DMs — both of them flirting and her confronting him — she’s described, in depth, her trauma. A stan account posted a fake exchange with House of Effie where she “admits” to making it all up, which House of Effie clarified was fake and then continued to post even more DMs, including what looks like a self-taken photo of Hammer’s hand covering one of his children’s faces. A friend of his estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers, meanwhile, told Daily Mail Chambers was “shocked and sickened” by all the DMs.
On Wednesday, Hammer finally acknowledged that something was going on. He announced that he was pulling out of the J. Lo romantic comedy Shotgun Wedding. “I’m not responding to these bullshit claims but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for 4 months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic,” he said in a statement, leaving out the fact that his own Instagram posts make it look like he left his children for twice that amount of time to return to LA as they started school in the Cayman Islands. “Lionsgate is supporting me in this and I’m grateful to them for that.” Bella Thorne also, inexplicably, posted something on IG defending him.
The day after the Shotgun Wedding announcement, an ex of Hammer’s named Courtney Vucekovich told Page Six that he told her he “wanted to barbecue and eat” her, which got most of the attention. But beyond the cannibalism headline, she described a relationship that sounds more insidious: “He quickly grooms you in the relationship. He kind of captivates you and while being charming, he’s grooming you for these things that are darker and heavier and consuming. When I say consuming, I mean mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, just everything,” she said. (She also mentions that he’s broke, which is curious to me.)
What do I think? I know it’s possible Instagram DMs can be doctored, but all the House of Effie correspondence is overwhelming. I’ve been following the account for five days and she’s posted a dozen unreleased conversations each day. I’m so far past wondering if these messages are real. We’ve known that he is interested in kink — he’s discussed it in multiple interviews over the years (see this Elle profile from 2013), and remember when he was liking rope stuff on Twitter a couple years ago, and that went sort of viral? I don’t have any cannibalism jokes about this. The House of Effie posts describe what looks like abusive behavior to me. My only question is what his next move is, if the account will work with someone to have these allegations reported out, and what his divorce looks like in the middle of all these allegations. (Hammer is being represented by Laura Dern-in-Marriage Story attorney Laura Wasser.)
I’m not trying to kink shame. But, genuinely, I don’t know how you look at any of this — the DMs, the quotes from his exes, his general unhinged behavior over the last six months — and conclude that he engaged with this woman in a way that respected the agreed-upon boundaries of their relationship. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and then all of a sudden drops out of a movie ...
I can only assume that he will defend himself, retreat for a year, and then get hired again, because that’s how this industry works.
It Takes Two
Mary-Kate Olsen is finally divorced. A Daily News reporter was, I guess, allowed to take a screenshot of the Zoom proceedings.
“The future is here and it’s bizarro, babe.” is a sentence I will be thinking about for many years to come. Poetry!
Sexless but City-er
I feel ambivalent about the Sex and the City reboot, which Kim Cattrall is not returning for. Of course I think the show will be lesser without her, but these reboots feel inevitable to me and I’m not in the mood to get worked up over them. I did re-read this excellent Hannah Giorgis essay, which I recommend:
SJP told TMZ “New York City” will be the show’s fourth character now, which honestly made me laugh hysterically. What a freshman seminar answer! The truth is that Sex and the City without Samantha is just a lot of Manolos and missionary.
Relationship Status
This week, on a podcast, Riz Ahmed revealed he was married. On The Tonight Show, he told Jimmy Fallon his wife is the novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza. Of their meeting, he said: “We just both sat down at the same table in a cafe where we both turned up to write. We were both jostling over the same laptop plug point, like a very modern way of meeting, and we struck up a friendship and then reconnected down the line.”
Sorry, but no one meets this way. Have you ever heard of two beautiful people “meeting” at a “cafe” and then “getting married.” I have never heard of two regular people “meeting” at a “cafe,” nor have I ever ended up talking to the person I’m “jostling over the same laptop plug point” with. I just think people should come up with better meet-cute stories!
I bet Leonardo DiCaprio asked for an Essence magazine but his assistant brought him an SSENSE magazine.
Rihanna is on this beautiful cover, featuring art by Lorna Simpson.
Please do not tell me what is going on here. I have thought long and hard about it and: I do not want to know!
Hanna, aka my favorite timeline menace, quote tweeted this Tiffany Haddish tweet. Unfortunately, it was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. I have not really checked in on Tiffany Haddish since she started dating Common. I wish I could provide further context, but what could properly contextualize a sentence like “I also believe I have big Breast, and a super fat ass and Aliens are real.”
The Sports Section
“Oh man / Oh man, oh man / Not again!”
For background, read this.
This has been the beginning and end of Hung Up’s sports section, at least until my favorite basketball player, Ray Allen, posts another iconic selfie.
I am finally ready to break my silence
...on the New York Times list of “Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far),” from November 25, 2020. Specifically the blurb about Nicole Kidman, the actor ranked fifth. Specifically these three lines: “One pleasure of a virtuosic performer is watching them rise above their material. Kidman has done so repeatedly, including in Birth (2004), in which she plays a widow who comes to believe that a 10-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her dead husband. It’s pretentious twaddle that Kidman graces with delicacy and pinpricks of emotion.”
Of course, as a lover of Birth, this hurt me to read. And of course I remained in my feelings about it through the rest of 2020, and the two weeks of 2021 that we have lived (suffered) through. I would like to say: Birth is a masterpiece! I also, randomly, had this mug made featuring a Birth screenshot (that is also my Twitter header) because I was thinking about the “Greatest Actors” blurb, and getting in my feelings about it all over again.
Meanwhile
I had two stories go up this week that I was really excited about. I profiled Zendaya for the cover of February’s GQ. We spent a lot of time talking about how unmoored she felt during the early months of quarantine, when she was unable to work. I was interested in writing about her because, for how much press she does, I felt like I didn’t know one single thing about her. She says all the right things and dresses in interesting ways, but I couldn’t pinpoint any opinion she had beyond her desire to be a good role model, or wanting more opportunities for black women in Hollywood.
As we talked, I wanted to write something that reflected what a vibrant actor she is, but how young and insecure she seemed, how being ambitious and hard-working sometimes meant being controlling and self-critical. And how those impulses sometimes get in the way of doing her best work — all things I found personally very relatable. “I felt like, when I wasn't working, my powers had gone away,” she told me. “And I was like, ‘Who the fuck—’ I didn't really know who I was and what makes me happy. What do I like to do? What else do I do? What is my value? What is my purpose now?”
I also profiled Jazmine Sullivan for Vulture, running in next week’s New York Magazine. I, as you might know, love mysterious people, or people who don’t blab a lot and overshare, as I am wont to do. What’s more: Sullivan is in love now! What does that mean for an artist who writes and sings so beautifully — and so often — about heartache?
I honestly didn't think this was real. But it is!
That’s it! Have a good weekend and I hope you make time for One Night in Miami.
This is going to sound so corny, don’t hate me for it, please. I looooove pop culture and movies so much but since the pandemic it has all felt so wrong and reading this makes it all feel so right again!!!! wasn’t ready to lose anything else so thank you Hunter!!!
excellent reporting on Armie, the people jumping to his defense by calling it mere kink-shaming and memeifying the whole thing have been really upsetting. also thank you for always giving a voice to Birth-heads everywhere! we will not be silenced