Jennifer Lopez wraps her summer tour after a successful run of shows

JLo has wrapped her summer tour, a successful run of shows. If there’s one thing JLo is going to do it is get up and work! She’s not a moper.

It’s a Taylor Swift takeover and her appearance on a podcast reminded me of a story about Meghan Sussex attempting to get Taylor on her Spotify podcast, allegedly. Taylor choosing not to appear has nothing to do with Meghan and more to do with her overall media strategy – she is very, very choosy about her interviews. Like Lainey said, we need to separate the Taylor and Beyoncé combo, the A+++++ celebrities, from the rest of the ecosystem.

Speaking of Meghan Sussex, the season two trailer for With Love, Meghan dropped the same day that their reworked deal with Netflix was announced. Good timing, good cycle of positive press. What’s the strategy for season two? I think she is tapped out on the podcast appearances; she’s been on The Drew Barrymore Show, so could do that again. Maybe late night?

Sydney Chandler, the star of Alien Earth, had a bit of tug-of-war with Variety a few weeks ago. On Variety’s side, it seems like she bailed on her costar (Timothy Olyphant) and the show creator (she says she was uncomfortable playing a game on camera with two older men - she’s 29), attempted to have the questions changed, changed her mind multiple times through her reps and said she would show, only to cancel at the last minute. Variety got petty by pulling back the curtain on the process of dealing with her team. Variety works with huge stars every day and acknowledges these shoots are difficult, with the implication that she excelled in that area. There’s a ton of inside baseball in the piece and maybe a larger discussion on how press junkets have become “gamified” instead of actual interviews, but I’m bumping hard against this being labelled a hit job. She whacked, they whacked back. Mutual combat.

A month later, she’s leaning quite hard into being a rookie. Kyle Chandler is her dad, he read with her on her audition tape (which I learned in Variety lol). Newer celebrities often come off as precious, they think they invented the wheel and that is the vibe I’m getting…but I’m questioning if it’s genuine. Pleading your case to Entertainment Weekly is not a rookie move. It’s smart to have EW be the answer to Variety. It’s also pretty calculated to get the “nepo baby but not really” story about her childhood out in a solo interview, rather than a cast piece. I think Sydney Chandler has game. She might be one to watch, from a gossip perspective.

Can I be mean for a second? Yes it’s huge, but it’s ugly. It has no style.