Hello there, if you are new to this site, you might be thinking… it’s January 28, why is this bitch talking about the new year? Well, this bitch is Chinese, and on the lunar calendar, the new year begins tomorrow. So this is your last minute reminder to clean up your sh-t, your home, your car, your office, get a haircut if you can…

 

Dust out the Dragon so that the luck of the Snake can come in on a smooth slither and bring good health and prosperity. 

And on that note, you will recall that in a post about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last week following Harry’s latest spiritual win over the UK tabloids, I said it could represent a reset for the Sussexes for a turnaround in 2025, just in time for Lunar New Year – which is especially significant for Meghan because she was born under the sign of the Rooster. 

 

The Rooster is usually quite lucky during Snake times. You know who’s also a Rooster? 

There she is, the bounceback queen herself, Jennifer Lopez, ready to really lean into her Rooster fortunes after a tumultuous 2024. As Sarah noted yesterday, JLo spent the weekend in Park City where Kiss of the Spider Woman premiered at Sundance to a standing ovation. We know the woman to be a hustler, it’s not like she doesn’t give all of herself to all of her projects. But from the very beginning, on this particular project, there was something extra. Because it’s a musical – and she’s wanted to be in musicals for a long, long time. Also, she’s been REJECTED from musicals for a long, long time. 

 

In fact, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter at Sundance she not only confirms that she was passed over for parts in several musicals, she names the ones that she tried for: 

“I remember auditioning for Evita, I remember auditioning for Chicago and for Nine — getting very close on Nine. There was a lot of things that I had always hoped that I could do and just wasn’t the right time. But this is the right thing.”

This is what I always say about JLo: that she will always think of herself as an underdog. To be clear, that doesn’t mean she actually is an underdog, but if we’re getting to what motivates her, how she approaches her decisions, the perspective that shapes her choices, if we are to really understand her, the underdog thing is one of her fundamentals. Because in the most formative years of her career, when she was just starting out, and pushing her way into the industry, she was, then, an underdog. Maybe that’s why her album title, This is Me… Then, is both prescient and ironic. Maybe that’s why This is Me… Now didn’t work. Because the “now” is still the “then”, at least in terms of where she situates herself in the context of Hollywood overall: an outsider, forever and always. 

 

So it’s both endearing and an eyeroll that she posted this to her feed last night after probably reading everything that was written about Kiss of the Spider Woman and the reaction out of Sundance. Second slide in the carousel, she actually posts a review, one of the most glowing reviews, that compares her to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

Your response to this will depend on how you feel about JLo – if you think she’s over-the-top, too much, if you were swept up in the tsunami of hate against her on TikTok last year, you will probably scoff at the vanity of her sharing with her followers that she’s on the receiving end of hyperbolic praise. 

 

I personally find it rather humanising. Because the cool girls don’t do this. Ben Affleck would never. JLo, of course, can’t help herself. At the heart of it is that she is still seeking the approval of the establishment. Whether or not the establishment deserves to be courted this way is another conversation. My point is that JLo doesn’t bother hiding the fact that she wants to be worthy. We saw that in her Halftime documentary when she included footage of her disappointment over not being nominated for an Oscar for Hustlers (I will stand by what I said at the time – she was robbed!) and we’re seeing it here in her emotion on the other side of that spectrum, because disappointment like that only happens when you want it so bad at the beginning. And now here she is, back at the beginning, having put that disappointment behind her and trying again. 

She was working on Kiss of the Spider Woman when Ben Affleck supposedly ghosted her. Purely from a gossip’s standpoint, this is the storyline I want to be following next year during award season. Like if JLo is in the race for a character she was playing while the love of her life abandoned her… 

Come through, Gossip Genie!