–Jennifer Lawrence covers Vanity Fair and talks about stepping away three years ago. “I was not pumping out the quality that I should have. I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?’ ” Since she’s been gone, she’s married art gallery director Cooke Maroney and is expecting her first child, and seems hesitant to jump back into the spotlight. “I’m so nervous. I haven’t spoken to the world in forever. And to come back now, when I have all of these new accessories added to my life that I obviously want to protect.”
–Andrew Garfield covers GQ to promote tick, tick…BOOM! (Have you watched it yet? It’s on Netflix and it’s great. I’m not even that much of a Broadway head and the “Sunday Brunch” cameos blew me away.) In the article, he goes deep about the recent loss of his mother. “A lot’s changed since then. Like losing my mum, and my psyche being totally rearranged by that. And life taking on a completely different hue and texture…tasting things differently. Hearing. Smell. It’s all different.”
–Garfield also spoke beautifully to Stephen Colbert about his late mother. (Warning: this video WILL make you tear up.) It’s rare to see such articulately expressed vulnerability on a talk show. “I’m indebted to everyone who’s brought me to this place so that I can honour the most beautiful person that I’ve ever experienced in my life through my art, and use it as a way to heal. Use it as a way to sew up the wounds, ’cause that’s what we do, right? That’s what you do every night, you sew up our wounds.”
-This Oscar promo tour is already wild! In his new memoir, Will Smith says he once developed a “psychosomatic reaction” to orgasms after engaging in “rampant sexual intercourse” to deal with being cheated on by his first girlfriend: “I had sex with so many women, and it was so constitutionally disagreeable to the core of my being, that I developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm. It would literally make me gag and sometimes even vomit.” How fun for his partners!
-We’re now at the stage of humanity where we’re tracking Pete Davidson’s hickeys…
-General Hospital has ousted fan fave Steve Burton. He’s the second star on the ABC sudser to not comply with the production’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Burton, who started the show in 1991, said “I did apply for my medical and religious exemptions, and both of those were denied. Which, you know, hurts. But this is also about personal freedom to me.”
–Hailee Steinfeld makes Jeremy Renner so much more tolerable just by sitting next to him. They took Buzzfeed’s quiz about Marvel trivia and he did terribly.
–Jay-Z scored three Grammy Awards nominations this year, making him the most nominated individual in Grammys history, a title he previously shared with Quincy Jones.
-Congrats to Freida Pinto, who welcomed her first baby.
-Amid all those Spider-Man rumours, Sandra Bullock insisted to Jimmy Kimmel she has “never been approached by Marvel.” She joked, “Who did they say I was going to be, like his grandmother or something?”
–Chrissy Teigen had “eyebrow transplant surgery” which is apparently a thing people do.
-An arbitrator has ruled that Kevin Spacey must pay a House of Cards producer nearly $31 million for sexual misconduct behind the scenes of the political series.
-With Jared Leto‘s performance in House of Gucci getting lots of (not great) attention, this is a good piece on what an actor loses when their prosthetics become the star, and Hollywood’s obsession with making celebs “unrecognizable.”
–Matthew McConaughey, whose just keep livin Foundation has raised $7.7 million for Texas storm relief, was named Philanthropist of the Year.
–Terra Field, a trans engineer at Netflix who was suspended and then reinstated in October amid outcry around Dave Chappelle’s special, has resigned.
-I watched the finale of The Morning Show because I couldn’t quite look away from the trainwreck it had become. Season one wasn’t great but season two was actually awful. I can’t believe that Jennifer Aniston agreed to it because her character became shrill and hateful. Instead of examining what could have been a fascinating storyline about reckoning with feelings of guilt/enabling when a close male friend is outed as a predator, all her character cared about was how it affected her own reputation. And then Steve Carell‘s character became sympathetic because of…cancel culture? Aniston’s unhinged rant in the finale was pathetic and self-victimizing, but the way Chip kept nodding made me think he (and, by extension, the show) agreed with her. What? Someone save Billy Crudup and Greta Lee from season three.
-The saga of a Toronto-based scammer (maybe?) who got outed on Twitter Spaces is fascinating.
-Netflix is dropping an adaptation of Anxious People on Dec 29. That was maybe the best book I’ve read this year (so far).
–Euphoria dropped the first teaser for its second season and a Jan 9 release date.
