Greetings from the doorstep of a three-day weekend here in the U.S. As usual, we’ll be taking Memorial Day (Monday) off and will return Tuesday with the hits and misses from the American Music Awards, and the end of Cannes.
On that tip, this week has been STOCKED with glam from the 2025 film festival: Cannes welcomed Emma Stone, Jennifer Lawrence, Diane Kruger in something perplexing, Jeremy Strong in a bucket hat, and Halle Berry in a gown she changed up at the last minute for fear of running afoul of the sudden new rules. We barely had time for anything else… but we made time for whatever tomfoolery this is from Noted Kook Parker Posey, because obviously.
Over on Drinks With Broads, we did a Eurovision rundown, touched on Pierpaolo Piccioli joining Balenciaga, and visited the gift shop of Hillwood Home in D.C. I also tried Scarlett Johansson’s fancy lip serum and we checked out the Times summer bestsellers from the 1930s.
Next week, And Just Like That returns, so the recaps for paid subscribers will start up on Monday, June 2, and for good measure The Tony Awards live chat is Sunday, June 8. The Gilded Age and The Bear are hot on their heels. Follow your heart and subscribe here if it takes you in our direction. Oh! And on Friday, May 30, I’m doing a Substack Live about AJLT at 2 p.m. Pacific time, hosted by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong of the Ministry of Pop Culture newsletter (and author of Sex and the City and Us). To join, you need to download and use the app — which I also need to do, as I never use it! — and if you like, you can enable a notification so that you’re reminded when we go live.
Elsewhere:
– Ezra Miller showed up at Cannes?!? They apparently sped so fast down the red carpet that no one got a photo, but they’ve worked with Lynne Ramsay before and so came to see Die, My Love (that’s the Jennifer Lawrence movie). We had Shia La Beouf and James Franco and Kevin Spacey came to amFAR; I cracked wise about which unwelcome force would come next… turns out we’d already had one.
– This is BONKERS: The Chicago Sun-Times ran an entire Summer Reading supplement… featuring ten books linked to real authors but which don’t exist. Turns out they bought the content from a company owned by Hearst (!) and it was written using A.I. It seems absolutely no one checked a single fact. Everyone please resist A.I. and Chat GPT and stuff; it’s using up all our water AND it sucks! [NPR]
– Related: The New York Times wrote about the measures students are taking to prove they didn’t complete work with A.I. I cannot IMAGINE having to screen-record my entire workflow. My professors would have been like, “So where did you go for THREE HOURS in the middle there?!?” [Gifted link]
– Some folks stay off social media, and then others use it to advertise their lube brand while confirming that they are having a lot of hot Cannes sex. Bless your frankness, Halle Berry, and for turning your business time into your actual business. [Lainey Gossip]
– The Ringer ranked all the Final Destination deaths from the entire franchise. One of the directors of Final Destinations: Bloodlines was my boyfriend in ninth grade (or was it eighth?) for about a week, and now he has the number one movie. I always knew I was holding him back!!!! ]
– It being Memorial Day, there are SALES happening. Of the brands Fug Nation seems to dig the most, Madewell is offering 25% off and an extra 40% off sale merch, with the code LONGWEEKEND. It doesn’t apply to all of their bags and accessories, which is a bummer because they have some great belts (I love this one), but it DOES apply to this medium crossbody and this ridiculously cute red mini-bag?!? Do I need this??? I do not. (DO I?)(Sorry, I just really like their bags.) In the same family, J.Crew is discounting a bunch of stuff — this great red floral print dress is marked down to $82 and goes up to size 24, and this red linen dress is $100 off. Full disclosure, they sent us one to try; it’s longer than I am used to (although that beats shorter), but I rather like it. The fabric feels expensive and weighty, yet not warm. And J.Crew Factory has up to 70% off and an extra 60% off clearance. They have a bunch of crinkle gauze shirts that are handy for summer evenings — I bought like four at The Gap two years ago and I am forbidden from getting more. This stripey short-sleeve sweater is cute, though; I have the long-sleeve version and it’s very lightweight but still opaque. Honestly, between that and Banana Republic Factory lately, I’m clearly becoming a Factory girl.
– The trailer for Season 4 of The Bear is here, and you know what it still is not? A COMEDY.
I do like that they brought in the Ever staff. Richie is going to end up with Sarah Ramos, right?!? I can’t remember her character name, but I insist. Also, this show drops in its entirety basically RIGHT when The Gilded Age arrives, which might also overlap with stupid And Just Like That… WHY IS EVERYTHING HAPPENING AT ONCE. We will probably do some batch chats/catch-ups for Drinks With Broads rather than covering it every week? But I said that with Severance, too, though, and look how that turned out, so.
– Variety did a whole profile on Zachary Levi, who is trying to fix his image and build a movie studio in Austin while also doubling down on his Trump/RFK support being brave AND insisting he’s liberal because “I have gay friends” and yada yada yada. You can smell the PR wafting off of it; it even earnestly refers to him as a disruptor, a term that will never NOT make my eyes roll clean into next week. There are two quotes from folks in the Chuck days, one more diplomatic than the other, that clearly wrestle with thinking he is a nice person but also being concerned he’s lost the plot.
– The Diddy trial has been so awful and triggering and scary and truly distressing. Cassie Ventura is an incredibly brave woman; her statement is great, and I LOVED her husband’s, too. He seems like the rock she deserves. Kid Cudi, her ex, has also now testified that Diddy is responsible for a freaking Molotov cocktail being thrown at his car?!? Monstrous.
– Lainey also ran down Janet Jackson’s Top 5 American Music Awards appearances, in advance of Janet getting the ICON Award. There’s one of Baby Janet in 1975!
– Well, shit. The Buffalo Bills drew the short straw and have to do HBO’s Hard Knocks, which I hope does not curse them because I’m rooting for them to FINALLY get back to the Super Bowl.
– Amy Poehler interviewed Mike Schur, creator of Parks & Rec (and Good Place, Brooklyn 99, etc.), on her podcast and used the time to show the Philly Justice trailer. Background, from The AV Club: Poehler, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones, Kathryn Hahn, and Paul Rudd had an ongoing joke that they’d done a pilot together in 2003 (but “Rudd didn’t really connect with the producers and he was replaced after the pilot with Dylan McDermott,” Poehler explained at the Paley Center in 2012). Since then, the group has continued to joke about their fake legal procedural and tease the actual Philly Justice trailer they made that year. NOW WE CAN SEE IT. Click here and then skip to 42:45, where Amy and Mike start talking about it; they bring the others on via Zoom at about 49 minutes, they read their character descriptions at 59 minutes, and then show the 90-second trailer they made at about 1:08. And it’s MARVELOUS. Dylan McDermott was the right casting choice. Sorry, Paul.
Have a restful weekend, and we will see you next week! Jessica will be back and Intern George can return to Broadway after spending the last ten days… also being on Broadway, because he blew me off in my hour of need. DIABOLICAL, SIR.
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