Cara Delevingne is in Vogue, talking frankly about addiction and sobriety and the paparazzi photos that were her wakeup call. It sounds like she’s in a better place, I hope she has a smoother road ahead of her now. (Go Fug Yourself)
This year’s Met Gala theme is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”. Rumor has it, Anna Wintour will crack down on the guest list—FINALLY—which allegedly means no Kardashians will be invited. Does this extend to Kendell Jenner, who is, for better or worse, a legit model? Of course, KarJenner-side sources say this is bullsh-t and of course they’re not being blackballed. I hope they are, though, just for the drama of it all. (DListed)
One thing that fascinates me about the British monarchy and aristocracy are all the finicky rules that dictate who gets called what and by whom. It’s so extra about something so meaningless, I love it. It’s the best kind of drama because it’s historical drama with no stakes in the modern day. It’s just about fancy little people calling each other by their fancy little made up names. Anyway, once Charles became king, Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor moved up the line and became grandkids of the monarch. As such, they are a prince and princess, no matter what anyone says, and Charles simply does not have the political capital to officially change that. So it is that Prince Archie of Sussex and Princess Lilibet of Sussex finally made their debut in the line of succession. Harry and Meghan just had to wait it out, and the fancy little rules about the fancy little names worked in their favor. (Celebitchy)
True crime alert: the new season of Serial is about Shelli Wiley’s murder in 1985. Investigative reporter Kim Barker is the narrator, she went to high school with Shelli. True crime aficionados might remember this as the unsolved case in which most of the evidence was destroyed in a fire set by the perpetrator, which also decimated Shelli’s remains, and then a former cop confessed to the crime in 2016. Update: he still hasn’t gone to trial! I can’t wait to listen to The Coldest Case in Laramie, and dig into the difficulties of finding justice when the only evidence that remains is memory, the evidence no one trusts. (Pajiba)
Mo’Nique is back, with a new comedy special, a new movie, and a new TV show this year, as well as a new profile in The Hollywood Reporter. They dub her absence from mainstream entertainment an “extended fallow period”, the rest of us just call it being blackballed. She didn’t play the Oscar game when she was nominated for Precious, which spilled over into feuds with Precious director Lee Daniels, and Precious producers Tyler Perry and Oprah. She talks about the feuds and her reconciliation with Daniels at length, (though she remains at odds with Perry and Oprah). It’s interesting to hear her journey over the last decade-plus, including her successful lawsuit against Netflix for not negotiating in good faith for a comedy special. I wonder, thinking back on her comments regarding fair pay and compensation, how differently those conversations would go today rather than back in 2010, or even 2017, when the Netflix comedy special thing went down—just before #MeToo kicked off a wide-ranging conversation about how women are treated at every level of the industry. Perhaps her rising profile has something to do with the tiny attitude shift brought about by the changes of the last few years. (THR)
