This is such a bonkers gossip story, I’m having a hard time believing that Brad Pitt, one of the world’s biggest movie stars, is at the center of it. And while it shouldn’t be funny, there’s a dark, twisted humour to it – that the current gossip about one of the world’s biggest movie stars is so cliché and also thirsty. 

 

As we all saw, Brad Pitt was photographed in France last week with his girlfriend Nicole Poturalski. They were apparently headed to Chateau Miraval, the estate he bought with Angelina Jolie, where their twins spent the first weeks of their lives and where they were married, surrounded by their six children, in 2014. And all this just as he and Angelina’s divorce has yet to be finalised because of controversy to do with the private judge assigned to the case. But now there are even more layers. 

PEOPLE.com this morning just published a Brad Pitt exclusive – Chateau Miraval’s new limited release rosé champagne! PEOPLE has all the details about the champagne and how it was made etc etc etc and quotes from Brad about why he’s so pumped about it etc etc etc, oh and this curious bit of information that was slipped into this paragraph: 

"The result is spectacular and I'm very proud of it," adds Pitt, who was in Miraval this past weekend in part to finalize details on the Champagne's limited first edition release which consists of 20,000 bottlings. He also participated in the 1200 acre estate's yearly harvest as he has in previous years.”

“….who was in Miraval in part to finalise details…”

IN PART?

Right. Tell me about the other part. 

What then is the takeaway here, beyond the fact that the champagne is available on October 15 (and I’m actually curious to try it because the Chateau Miraval rosé is actually quite good and not super expensive – in Canada it retails for about-ish $25, varying per province)? Are we being assured that he wasn’t just taking his young model lover to what used to be the family home in France? That, you know, he was actually WORKING!?! That it wasn’t a total insensitive dick move, bringing Nicole there, because he had business to do, OK? It was business! 

 

If that’s the case, I don’t know how that helps. So, wait, you were there to work and decided to make it a lovers’ getaway at the same time…because you couldn’t be in Europe and not see her, even if it meant seeing her in a place where your ex-wife nursed your two youngest babies, where hallways that used to reverberate with the sound of your children playing and laughing are now filled with silence? Sure. 

Go out and buy his champagne, that’s a solid pivot, I guess. And don’t forget this is a man of taste. The PEOPLE article about champage is all about the floral and fruit notes in the flavour. And it represents occasion: 

“For me," Pitt explains to PEOPLE, "Champagne conjures up feelings of celebration, quality, prestige, and luxury. But rosé Champagne is still relatively unknown. Backed by our success with Miraval in Provence, I wanted us to try to create the defining brand of rosé Champagne, focusing all our efforts on just this one color." 

Feelings of celebration! 

OMG, this man. He is something else with this timing. 

And… there’s more to the timing. I’m sure you saw the article in the Daily Mail a few days ago? According to the Daily Mail, Brad met Nicole a year ago at Roland Mary’s restaurant in Berlin when he was there on promotion for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Who is Roland Mary other than the owner of the restaurant? Apparently he’s Nicole’s husband, current. The father of her child. He is 68 years old. She is 27. Their son is 7. They have an open marriage, allegedly. If anything, maybe think about those circles – Brad and his Once Upon a Time costar Leo, whose been known for the last 25 years to avoid romance with anyone over 25, and this old dude in Germany, and Brad Pitt and the company they keep with young women. 

 

Beyond that, though, Nicole is not the focus here. Let’s talk instead about Brad Pitt. Because he has relied on the MiniVan Majority’s enduring crush on him for decades and a certain illusion that we’ve been culturally encouraged to uphold. It’s why Angelina Jolie has so often been characterised as the “difficult” one between them. The bitch who tried to smear his reputation. The bitch who tried to alienate him from his children. As if all Brad ever wanted was to put on an apron and barbecue burgers in the backyard but she held him back from that life because she wanted to do be on a plane with their kids flying from one country to the other. She was the one who was unstable, and now she’s the one who won’t let him go. 

Is it really that she won’t let him go? Or is it that… well… he was already gone? On his own private plane, jetting from one country to the other, or on his bike, from one highway to the other, making his wines, dining with rich men and their young female companions, visiting his arty friends, dreaming about his vineyard and his sculptures. 

What image have we committed Brad Pitt to and is there an alternate reality that people have refused to see? One that he’s helped in obfuscating? 

PEOPLE.com caters to a specific audience. When they’re publishing pieces that read like press releases for Chateau Miraval’s new rosé champagne talking about the production method of creating the blend (“saignée) and bleeding the grapes and the salinity of the flavour, is that really what the PEOPLE subscriber cares about? Is PEOPLE a champagne media outlet?! 

Is this really about branding for the champagne or, rather, is this in service of Brad Pitt’s brand – as a distraction from the latest about his private life and the picture that’s emerging that he may not be the dude that the pop culture public has been so invested in for all these years? 

Attached - Brad arriving back in Paris on the weekend.