Dear Gossips,

I’m only halfway through the new Bradley Cooper episode of the Smartless podcast and if you haven’t listened yet, I’m sure you’ve seen the big headline coming out of it about how BCoop shared that it was Will Arnett who got real with him back in 2000 when he was 29 years old and struggling with addiction and being an asshole to everyone. It was an emotional revelation and the big takeaway should be how close they are. Bradley’s known all three of them, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will, for 20 years. They’re obviously really close – and they need these real relationships, with real memories, because Hollywood is such a f-cked up place… which is what they talk about too.

Because just before Bradley tells that story about Will’s intervention, they’re all laughing about how BCoop is the kind of person who never forgets a slight – as he explains it, he remembers every detail about the interaction: the date, the time of day, where they were, what the light was like, what the person was wearing, and what exactly they said to insult him, verbatim. The way he describes it is really funny, like he’s in total Phil mode from The Hangover. So anyway, he goes on to recount an interaction he had at the CAA party on Oscar weekend four years ago where he was talking to an actress and a director (both unnamed) and the director is all like, so how many nominations do you both have now? It was three for the actress and, at that point, seven for BCoop. To which the director responds, “What world are we living in where you have seven nominations and she’s only got three?”

Bradley followed up that anecdote with another, at that same party during Oscar weekend in 2011 when he’d just been nominated for his performance in Silver Linings Playbook alongside “Daniel Day F-cking Lewis”, in his words, and Denzel Washington and he runs into this “hero female actress” who says to him, “I saw your movie, you deserve The Nom”. Bradley continues, “I was like, ‘What? I’m sorry, what?’ ‘The Nom.’ Then like ten or 20 minutes later, I’m not kidding, I passed her going to the bathroom and she mouths it. ‘The Nom.’ What the f-ck is this town?”

There are pricks in every industry, famous or otherwise, but in Hollywood it’s a particular kind of insecurity that becomes its own unique form of douchebaggery that results in these kinds of stories featuring people who would actually say that kind of sh-t to someone’s face. And it’s why fame doesn’t necessary “fix” anything because they’re all so scarred by these experiences that happen over and over again, on top of the scars of rejection from the auditions they go to, when they’re on their way up.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Jason Bateman Gossip

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