Party Angelina

The post previous to this one today was about Jennifer Aniston and her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, during which she and Jimmy joked about some of the crazy sh-t that’s been reported about her, including a cover story in In Touch Weekly about her allegedly making the moves on Barack Obama. 

That was back in August but today In Touch has a new “exclusive” about Jen, and it has to do with Angelina Jolie:

 

There is no way that anyone connected to Jennifer Aniston and/or Sandra Bullock is telling In Touch Weekly anything. But they’re playing on the gossip feud that’s now going on 20 years, Jen vs Angie, and the gossip ecosystem’s ongoing fascination with Hollywood friends and factions, mean girls and mean boys in a competitive industry who are not as collegial behind the scenes as they are when they’re out in public. 

Sometimes those friend connections work in an actor’s favour, and in their article, In Touch invokes what happened at the Oscars a couple of years ago when Andrea Riseborough, who was very much not in the conversation that season, secured a nomination (over Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler) after many of Hollywood’s biggest names, mostly women, and all white, rallied around her – and that list of names included Jennifer Aniston. 

It would have been easy, then, for In Touch to come up with a source quote building on that situation, but in reverse: 

“It’s not really a mystery where Sandra’s loyalty is and her friendship with Jen plugs both of them into a powerful network of awards voters – this is the same crew that got Andrea Riseborough an Oscar nomination out of nowhere, and it’s a lot easier for them to make sure somebody doesn’t get nominated.” 

Again, I don’t believe for a second that someone who knows Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock would have said this to In Touch. But we have, over the course of the last few weeks as Angelina’s Oscar campaign has heated up, talked about the Hollywood popularity contest, and whether or not other celebrities would pull up for Angelina considering that she is not as embedded in the celebrity community that will ride hard for one of their own. They might not necessarily be campaigning against her but who would campaign for her the way others might be putting energy into the campaigns of the other contenders in the field? 

On that note, Angelina was out again last night in New York, again at Atelier Jolie, hosting a party for some notables from the fashion industry. Diane Von Furstenberg was there, as was Tory Burch. And also Chris Rock. Not that these people have any of the impact of the blondes of Bel Air who boosted Andrea Riseborough but my point is that this recent stretch is about as networky as we’ve seen from Angelina in years. 

Maria will be screening at AFI Fest in LA near the end of this month so Angelina’s campaign will soon be heading west to Hollywood just as award season starts peaking. I can’t wait to see how the race will start to change shape as we get a sense of how the industry and its players will be mobilising and which projects and performances they’ll be getting behind. 

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