Newsletter Tuesday, February 06, 2018

[LaineyGossip.com - Calling all smuthounds!] Tuesday, February 06, 2018 [Intro for February 6, 2018]( [Margot Robbie attends the 90th Annual Academy Awards Nominee Luncheon at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 5, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California](Dear Gossips, Sharon Lewis is the first woman of colour to host two national live TV programs in Canada. She’s a broadcaster, an author, a playwright, an actor, and a director. Her new film, [Brown Girl Begins]( is screening this month and next across Canada to celebrate Black History Month, only Sharon wants to call it Black Future Month because, as she told us on [The Social]( yesterday, her son wanted to see representations of himself not only in the past but also in the future. We’ve talked a lot about representation and diversity in Hollywood. And just as it is in Hollywood, for too long in Canada’s arts community, the stories and the faces telling those stories have been the same. Sharon has actively pushed for more inclusion in the industry and through her work, is challenging stereotypes and misconceptions about people of colour and, in particular, women of colour. Brown Girl Begins is an afrofuturist feature film (based on Nalo Hopkinson’s book, Brown Girl In The Ring) about a young black woman who is trapped in a world forced upon her. Ti-Jeanne, a reluctant priestess, must resurrect Caribbean spirits and survive the possession ritual that killed her mother, or her people will die. It’s taken Sharon 15 years to make Brown Girl Begins, the first ever Canadian-Caribbean science fiction feature film. Here’s a video about that experience: And here’s the trailer for the film: One of the producers of Brown Girl Begins is Jenn Paul, a colleague of mine at Bell Media. Jenn is a driven and passionate young creative, selected in 2014 by the ReelWorld Film Festival as one of 20 Emerging Artists. It’s an exciting time here and everywhere, seeing a new class of female content generators working in front of and behind the camera on projects like Brown Girl Begins. Both Sharon and now Jenn are actively pursuing opportunities for other women, and women of colour, to join the community, to tell more stories, to tell their stories. For more on Brown Girl Begins, please [click here](. And now, let’s talk about the Horse. The Horse is the 4th luckiest sign in the Chinese zodiac during the Year of the Dog. There is a lucky star on the side of the Horse which means that Horses will be leaders, people will notice your work. That lucky star, however, is balanced by 3 bad luck stars, all of them petty sh-t disturbers. You may be distracted by rumours, backstabbers, and small legal matters. So don’t make impulsive decisions this year as they will cost you in the end. As with all signs, Horses must be mindful of the Fire. Horses may not do well in heat. Take care of your body, hydrate, and especially be careful when you’re in the car. Putting a fish bowl/tank in the north end of your home may help. Horses may experience minor injuries. Sometimes minor injuries can block bad luck. A cavity, for example, or a paper cut, is way better than surgery. If that’s the case, don’t dwell on that as a setback. Horses are also advised to pay extra close attention to family members this year, especially in the summer. 1954 Metal Horse – the presence of a benefactor may result in small gambling wins or some lottery luck. 1966 Water Horse – Horses born this year will be very busy, with many of projects in development. 1978 Fire Horse – Many mentors are available to Horses born this year. Learn from them as much as you can to better your circumstances. Your luck is concentrated between your brows this year. So if you don’t have a “nice” in-between-the-brow area, look out for your mother’s health and celebrate a big birthday. Since “nice” is so subjective, all Horses born this year should just celebrate a big birthday. 1990 Earth Horse – Margot Robbie is a Horse born this year. Career plans should be moving ahead smoothly for 1990 Horses. Be on alert for temptation though. It could distract and destroy and it may not leave you alone. 2002 Wood Horse – Horses born this year are soon entering adulthood. It’s a good time to explore but stick to the rules and do not stray off the path. No off-roading. Female Horses of all years are encouraged to mind their tempers this year or it could negatively impact relationships. Some mentors will give you good advice and that’s a bonus. But other people will pretend they’re mentors when they’re not. These are people who will prevent you from focusing, who’ll want to party all the time, and they are not going to help. Horses could be particularly susceptible to the strong Fire this year. So please prioritise your health and nutrition, eat a balanced diet, drink a lot of water, especially Horses born under the fire and wood signs. Horses need to properly manage the heat, safety first before luck. In February and March, see the doctor, go for a full physical. In April and May, think through it if you’ve asked to invest. Do not trust easily or quickly. June, July, and August is Fire season. Be extra vigilant about your physical and mental health. Enjoy the sun but sparingly. Be careful driving and don’t over-indulge. These are good months to go on holiday or to go on business trips. It might be fun. But while you’re having fun don’t get too carried away and let your guard down or you might get hurt. Between December 7 and January 5, 2019, avoid major events or activities like home buying or moving or big parties. This is not the time for it. Remember, good luck is no use to you when you’re not well enough to enjoy it. The Squawking Chicken isn’t here to scare you, she only wants to make sure that good luck isn’t wasted by carelessness. Your year will only be better if you give your luck a reason to stick around. Queued up for tomorrow: the Snake. Yours in gossip, Lainey [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 1:55 PM [Surprise, it’s a new Cloverfield movie]( [Gugu Mbatha-Raw arrives for the 2018 DGA Awards at the Beverly Hilton, on February 3, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California]( A couple of years ago, JJ Abrams sprung a new Cloverfield movie on us after only a few months of hype. That movie, [10 Cloverfield Lane](, turned out to be pretty good. And then began the hype for the next Cloverfield movie, which was, by that point, assumed to be a project called God Particle, which had been percolating at Abrams’ shingle Bad Robot since 2012. The movie, officially retitled The Cloverfield Paradox, debuted on Sunday just after the Super Bowl after a surprise trailer drop during the game, cutting the hype window down to about two hours. Ava DuVernay was conductor of the hype train, [teasing the surprise release]( and dubbing Paradox a “[game-changer](”. She is certainly correct that this is a big splashy push from Netflix for a movie by a black filmmaker (Julius Onah, The Girl is in Trouble) and starring an inclusive cast featuring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, and Zhang Ziyi. But in order for The Cloverfield Paradox to be a real game-changer, it would have to be good. And it’s not. This third Cloverfield movie begins in a world on the brink of collapse as Earth is running out of energy. Ava Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is an officer with NASA who is debating whether or not take a mission to space to test a particle accelerator even bigger than the Large Hadron Collider. The goal of this mission is to get the accelerator to work, thus creating free perpetual energy for Earth, through cold fusion, I guess? Hamilton decides to go to space, and then we get an opening-credit montage showing time passing on the space station as test after test fails to sustain the particle accelerator. By the end of the opening credits, almost two years have passed and the situation on Earth is getting dire, and the crew is beginning to snap at one another as the pressure mounts. Space movies are essentially survival flicks, so they’re not required to be complicated, but we do need to understand who the characters are, just enough to care whenever something bad happens to them. The chief problem with Paradox is that we don’t care about any of the characters. No one is a person in this movie, it’s just a bunch of talking cardboard moving around one another, usually with a total lack of motivation. Hamilton is the closest thing to an actual person, having a backstory—she has a husband back on Earth and, we learn halfway through the movie, dead children. The dead children are a real surprise, and honestly, it feels like a chunk of Paradox was excised in favor of making a shorter, sleeker movie, which doesn’t help the whole “no people” thing. Survival flicks also require an antagonist, even if that’s just a set of threatening circumstances. In space movies the antagonist is either an alien or the inhospitable nature of space itself, but in Paradox it’s neither. There is no real antagonist here. If the characters resembled actual people we could invest in, then maybe we’d care when the crew starts turning on one another. But the characters are not actual people and it’s impossible to care about anyone, so there is no tension in these conflicts. Do you feel bad when two blocks collide and fall over? No? Same thing. Interpersonal drama only works when you care about the person. There are other problems in Paradox, such as how f*cking cheap it looks, the incredibly stupid subplot about Hamilton’s husband back on Earth—which serves to (unnecessarily) connect Paradox back to Cloverfield—and Bear McCreary’s heavy-handed score. But the main thing is that the characters never make any sense. At one point, one of the crew, Mundy (Chris O’Dowd), loses an arm in a quantum entanglement mishap, and his reaction is to continue on like nothing has changed. I will give credit to Paradox for using quantum entanglement as a plot device, and also to O’Dowd for a phenomenal line reading on “That’s my f*cking arm”, but the complete lack of regard for how such a thing would affect a character is what makes Paradox bad. Things happen, but characters continue on as if nothing happened, and good luck caring about any of it. The balls-out way Netflix dropped this movie really could have changed the landscape if The Cloverfield Paradox was any good. But it’s not good, so the end result is the world’s flashiest bargain-bin rental. The Cloverfield Paradox is now streaming on Netflix. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 8:33 PM [What is going on with Annihilation?]( [Natalie Portman spotted out in NYC arriving at the SNL After Party, February 3, 2018](Despite a couple good-looking trailers, there have been [warning signs]( that things are not all well with the upcoming Natalie Portman-fronted sci-fi flick Annihilation. The film is due to be released on February 23 in North America and China, but its studio, Paramount, has sold all other international distribution rights to Netflix, which will premiere the film abroad just seventeen days after its North American release. That’s an unusual move, and one that specifically looks like Paramount limiting the damage Annihilation can do if it fails. Their deal with Netflix offloads much of the production budget onto the streamer, and it saves the studio the cost of international advertising and distribution. If audiences in North America and China embrace Annihilation, then Paramount may end up with egg on its face, having sold out international box office on a potential hit, but if audiences don’t embrace the movie, then they’re going to look smart for cutting their losses. It seems like the main issue with Annihilation is that no one knows how it will do. Apparently a test audience last summer didn’t respond well, which led to a clash between two of Paramount’s power producers, Scott Rudin and David Ellison. Rudin’s name you should recognize from frequent Oscar runs, and Ellison is the son of billionaire Larry Ellison. His sister, Megan, runs the indie-minded Annapurna Pictures, and is generally regarded as a savior of independent cinema with excellent taste. David runs Skydance, which bails out blockbusters and co-finances Paramount’s slate, including such hits as Geostorm. No one ever talks about his taste. According to The Hollywood Reporter, after eating it with Geostorm, Ellison didn’t want another high-profile flop, and so demanded changes to Annihilation to make it more audience-friendly, thinking it “too intellectual” for the schmoes who go see movies. But Rudin stood by the director, Alex Garland, who previously made Ex Machina with Rudin, a sleeper hit and eventual Oscar winner. It’s not hard to see why Rudin would back Garland, given their previous success together, and he used his final cut clause to protect Garland’s vision. Then Paramount turned around and dumped the international release on Netflix. Here’s where this gets even more inside baseball—Annihilation isn’t the only movie Paramount [has dumped on Netflix]( recently. A surprise ad during the Super Bowl announced that Netflix would be releasing the next Cloverfield movie, The Cloverfield Paradox, immediately after the game. The previous two Cloverfield movies, Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane both did well, so it was surprising to see The Cloverfield Paradox—originally titled God Particle—sold off in such unceremonious fashion. So why all of a sudden is everything at Paramount for sale? Regime change. Brad Grey was ousted early last year—he has since passed away—and Jim Gianopulos took over. Gianopulos seems very unwilling to suffer losses handed down from Grey’s tenure, and he dumped these two movies, both box office risks. The Cloverfield Paradox definitely would not do well in theaters—full review to follow but it’s not good. But Annihilation does not look bad. Weird? Yes. Very. But bad? “Too intellectual” is not the same thing as bad, and test audiences are useless anyway, I don’t even know why we’re listening to people who still go to malls. But this is the state of American cinema in 2018. Anything that requires the least little bit of convincing to get people to see is now too risky for theatrical release, and, ironically, a movie released on a streaming platform stands to gain a bigger audience than theatrical release. [Source]( [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 8:01 PM [Smutty Social Media, February 6, 2018]( [Britney Spears and her boyfriend Sam on Instagram](Diane Kruger is learning to ride a motorcycle. Do you think she is [getting lessons from Norman]( [A post shared by Diane Kruger (@dianekruger)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 1:22pm PST Have you read Stacy London’s piece in [Refinery 29](? She delves into not just her health issues (she had major surgery) but the toll it took on her relationships, her mental health and her finances (medical bills, as well as her desire to splurge as a way of easing her post-surgery recovery, put a huge drain on her savings). If you have time this week, I’d recommend it. [A post shared by stacylondonreal (@stacylondonreal)]( on Feb 1, 2018 at 5:28pm PST Remember when Stephen Dorff played a version of Justin Timberlake in the [Everytime video]( We should have listened. She was trying to warn us. [A post shared by Britney Spears (@britneyspears)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 1:25pm PST Serena Williams sighting! (This wasn’t a social call but a board meeting – Serena is Chairwoman of the Advisory Board for Oath, which aligns AOL and Yahoo brands [under Verizon](.) [A post shared by Zac Posen (@zacposen)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 9:52pm PST [A post shared by Karlie Kloss (@karliekloss)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 10:11pm PST No shade to Jenna Dewan but this looks like a mock magazine cover for women. Diets and G-spot hunting are so 90s. [A post shared by Jenna Dewan Tatum (@jennadewan)]( on Feb 6, 2018 at 6:35am PST W Mag has done the now-familiar “[Lindsay Lohan comeback](” story – she’s working on so many projects! You know how Lindsay does it, work work work. She has a cosmetics line, candles, and an haute couture clothing line on her plate. (What isn’t touched on is the one thing I’m interested in – how does she afford to live in Dubai?) And her [Oscar hope is still alive](: “I want to go because I have accomplished something great, and I just want to be there for the film. I don’t want any personal thoughts, or, I don’t want to come there with a statement of some kind. I just want to come there and say, ‘I’ve been aspiring to come here on the stage like all the Hollywood greats that I’ve looked up to my whole life—the Elizabeth Taylors, the Marlene Dietrichs, the Anne Baxters—and I’m here. Thank you.’ I just want to say thank you.” Lindsay Lohan, the eternal optimist. [A post shared by W magazine (@wmag)]( on Feb 5, 2018 at 6:05am PST This morning, I wrote about Sarah Silverman and Michael Sheen’s breakup announcement, [which doubled as his birthday card](. the joke here is I just realized I posted our breakup tweet on his actual birthday and I can’t believe what a dick I am — Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) [February 6, 2018]( Can u believe it?? He said I wasn’t THOUGHTFUL. Jerk... Anyway, Happy Birthday, Michael... 😬 — Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) [February 6, 2018]( [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 7:17 PM [The Oscar Nominees Luncheon]( [Oscar nominees including Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Gary Oldman, Timothee Chalamet, Daniel Kaluuya, Sally Hawkins, Margot Robbie, Saoirse Ronan, Greta Gerwig, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Sam Rockwell, Kobe Bryant, Mary J. Blige, Allison Janney, Laurie Metcalf, Jordan Peele, and Octavia Spencer attend the 90th Annual Academy Awards Nominee Luncheon at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 5, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California](You know who wasn’t at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon yesterday? Frances McDormand. At least I don’t see her in any of the photos. And maybe this isn’t surprising. Remember at the SAGs when Frances won for Best Actress and got up on stage all like, hey, younger actresses need [doorstops too](? She was basically telling the Academy that she appreciates the honour but… don’t vote for her? Seems like she’s taking that seriously. Like, sure, perhaps she had a scheduling conflict. Busy working on something else. But with Frances, it’s also very possible that she really wouldn’t mind at all if the Academy gave the Best Actress Oscar to someone else. [Frances]( is currently the favourite in the category. Her co-star Sam Rockwell is the favourite in his category, Best Supporting Actor. He was there because he doesn’t have one and wants one, like most people who don’t have and want, with the exception of maybe Woody Harrelson, also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but who probably knows it’s Sam’s and would rather not have to get dressed up and spend several hours having lunch with these people when he could be at the beach. Or anywhere else. But then there’s someone like [Octavia Spencer]( who does indeed have an Oscar already and is nominated again and isn’t the frontrunner because it’s going to be [Allison Janney]( and wants to go anyway because she enjoys the experience and because she’s there as part of the team representing The Shape Of Water, alongside Guillermo del Toro, [Sally Hawkins](, and Richard Jenkins. No one there had more nominations than Meryl Streep, of course, and Meryl isn’t bored of it. Meryl showed up in a tiered off-white dress and was pretty cute during the class photo, lifting her arms up in the air in celebration. About this class photo – what would you do if you somehow got to be a part of it? As in what would you wear? Specifically the colour? Would you not want to stand out? Or would you want to f-cking stand out? I love that Emily V Gordon chose to stand out. Look how that metallic green pops in the group shot! It doesn’t seem as bright when she and Kumail Nanjiani are at the photo wall but when they’re lit all together like that, you can spot her right away. Same goes for [Timothee Chalamet]( in a green suit. Or, if you want to be more subtle, you can do like Jordan Peele and go with green for the tie only. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 6:01 PM [This Is Us wins]( [Milo Ventimiglia at Spago in LA, February 5, 2018](Why do we do this to ourselves? If you’re a crier like me, the Super Bowl episode of This Is Us was not fun to watch. It was good television – if you like emotional network TV dramas –but enjoyable? Gratifying? I mean, is sobbing into your laptop fun? Then I’m having a f-cking blast right now. I’ll get to whether Jack’s death was worth the long, annoying and heavily promoted buildup but first, let’s take a moment to acknowledge Mandy Moore. *Spoilers ahead* Mandy. Moore. Holy sh-t. I was moved by A Walk to Remember like everyone else with a soul in 2002 but did we know she had all of THAT in her? The sequence from the vending machine back to Jack’s hospital room has to be her 2018 Emmy submission. Strong runner-up is the scene when she’s standing in front of Miguel, her husband’s best friend and future husband, like a badass telling him to get his sh-t together for the kids. For the love of Beyoncé, give this woman an Emmy. Grief can be overacted. We’ve all seen the over-the-top, head in knees, scream-crying, doctor-hold-me-back-while-I-flail-obnoxiously upchuck of emotion that typically happens on network dramas. [Mandy Moore]( was understated and enthralling while still being utterly devastating. At one point, I just yelled STOP at her face through tears. I needed a break from all the feelings, damn it. The details of Jack’s death have never interested me. I’ve [made it very clear]( that the big mystery surrounding This Is Us was always the least intriguing thing about this show. Both Mandy Moore and [Milo Ventimiglia]( say they feel “[relieved](” that Jack’s death has been revealed. I’m relieved I can stop complaining about how much I don’t care about how Jack died. For those of you who did care, was it everything you hoped for? I was LIVID when they foreshadowed last week that Jack would go back for the dog. Really, This Is Us? I love dogs. I’m not going to be the person who says Jack should have let the dog die in that burning house but it is SO clichéd to have the man die from going back in the house to save a dog. This is not how I wanted Jack Pearson to go out. I was initially disappointed by Jack’s heroic send-off (I wanted him to relapse and go out in a complicated, very unheroic blaze of glory – too soon?) but this episode was so beautifully crafted and executed, I came around by the end. I’m not even mad at the show’s latest and maybe even biggest BIG TWIST. Welcome flash forwards. I knew you were coming and I still gasped and screamed at the same time when Future Tess said hi to Future Randall. I am SO HERE for Future Randall. I’ve [had issues with]( the show’s twists in the past but the Super Bowl episode had multiple twists (Jack not actually dying in the fire started by a CROCK POT, Tess’s flash forward, Deja’s return) and they all felt organic. They didn’t feel gimmicky. They absolutely were gimmicks and I’m sure other critics will call them lazy plot stunts but for me, this was This Is Us at its best. I sobbed the whole time, obviously, but I was also [in awe of the talent on screen](. Hannah Zeile as teen Kate was exceptional. [Chrissy Metz]( was solid, even though she was out-acted by Mandy Moore. Justin Hartley as Kevin still continues to surprise me when he’s even just a notch above mediocre and he was actually pretty great. Eris Baker who plays Young Tess destroyed me. As someone with serious Daddy Issues, watching the Randall/Tess scenes were what I imagine being impaled by a spear feels like – but, you know, in a good way. Now that Jack is dead, I’m really excited for what’s coming next. Don’t worry. Milo Ventimiglia [says he’s not going anywhere](. Sure, there are approx. 14 timelines to follow now and there’s a lot of room for the twists to get annoying as f-ck again (and [they promise Nicky is coming back UGH]() but without the “How Did Jack Die?” question looming over every episode, there’s more freedom to delve deeper into these characters who are really starting to feel like family. The best part of This Is Us’ Super Bowl episode? After the big game took a massive rating dip – which I’m going to chalk up to Justin Timberlake and the NFL’s declining social relevance/ treatment of Colin Kaepernick—This Is Us garnered the biggest post-Super Bowl audience [since 2012](. A TV show whose defining characteristic is making people cry was (relatively) more popular than America’s biggest football game. Hahahahahahaha. Here is Milo out in LA yesterday. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 4:24 PM [Barbra… and Gwyneth?!?]( [Barbra Streisand/Gwyneth Paltrow ](One of the best celebrity facts of all time is that Barbra Streisand has a mall in her basement. An actual mall. We have [written about]( Barbra’s mall several times here on this blog. And for some reason, people don’t pay attention – TO THE FACT THAT SHE HAS A MALL IN HER MANSION! If that’s you, please, for the love of gossip, [look at this mall](. Anyway, a couple of years ago, Ryan Murphy [told the story]( about the time he and Lady Gaga were invited for dinner at Barbra’s and she invited them down to the mall. Now Ryan is doing a new comedy series, called The Politician, starring Ben Platt, and Barbra is in negotiations to be in it. Hopefully he’ll talk her into shooting some scenes in the mall? Can you imagine how excited Ben Platt, the theatre kid, must be? He met [Barbra Streisand]( last year… ….and now he’s going to be her co-star!?! Oh, and [Gwyneth Paltrow]( too. Gwyneth and [Ryan Murphy]( have, of course, worked together before, on Glee. Which is when she met Brad Falchuk, Ryan’s producing partner, and now her fiancée. G is also apparently in negotiations to star in The Politician. She’s been saying that acting’s not her priority anymore. Well, when there’s a Netflix series on the table and an immediate order for two seasons, acting’s her thing again. And acting with Barbra Streisand, no less. It doesn’t stop, does it? She’s Gwyneth, to begin with. With the Oscar and the everything. And then came the goop. And even when she gets divorced, she ends up with a reasonably aged, successful award-winning television producer fiancé, like immediately. And now she gets to work with Barbra Streisand. G and Barbra probably go back though, perhaps through G’s ma, Blythe Danner? They were in Meet The Fockers together. And I’m sure the association goes beyond that too. But there are all kinds of connections at play here. Gwyneth is, somehow, always in the middle of them. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 3:40 PM [Masters of Ex]( [Michael Sheen and Sarah Silverman](We liked Sarah Silverman and Michael Sheen together, right? We did. In 2016, Lainey celebrated Sarah and Michael making it through another year and we have been continually entertained by his relationship with his ex, Kate Beckinsale, and her relationship with Sarah (they love each other) [on social media](. Since then, Sarah’s spoken about their struggle as a long-distance couple (and who else would she confess this to but her ex, [Jimmy Kimmel]() but it seems like the off-again status has been made permanent. The great [@michaelsheen]( & I consciously uncoupled over Christmas. I mean, not “over Christmas” - like that wasn’t the fight that ended it. No fight. We just live in different countries & it got hard. Felt we should just tell y’all so u stop askin, “How’s Michael/How’s Sarah?” — Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) [February 5, 2018]( It happened over Christmas, which means they’ve each had some time to process it. No one ran to their publicist to release a statement, neither have been caught “canoodling” with someone else by the Daily Mail. (Still, I can’t help but picture them sitting in front of a picture window, snow falling, while they have The Conversation, because I’ve seen too many Christmas movies.) But they don’t want you to ask after them. That’s the point of the tweet, to shut down “where’s [Michael](” or “how’s [Sarah](” inquiries. They might end up being great friends, but right now, two months after a 4-year relationship, they need a breather. And being asked about your ex by a pap at the airport or on a red carpet must be awkward as f-ck. So she’s getting it out there – it’s done, we’re fine, move along nothing to see here. It’s not PR as we are used to seeing from celebrities – there’s no canned statement or scandal. She probably asked him before she sent the tweet, and even tagged him on it. It’s just two grownups breaking up and having to let their Twitter followers know because we live in a weird time guys. As I said, it’s only been a few months so it’s not like I’m going to Gossip Genie right now. (But if Sarah and Nick Kroll started hanging out, I certainly wouldn’t object.) [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 3:18 PM [Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl ratings]( [Justin Timberlake performs onstage during the Pepsi Super Bowl LII Halftime Show at U.S. Bank Stadium on February 4, 2018 in Minneapolis, Minnesota](Back in October when it was finally confirmed, after weeks of speculation, that Justin Timberlake would headline the Super Bowl halftime show, I wrote that [it wasn’t all bad](: The NFL’s ratings have been on the decline. And players continue to kneel during the national anthem. These have been the major headlines surrounding the league for months as deep divisions between owners and players and players and fans continue to dominate the discussion. THAT’s the Super Bowl Justin Timberlake is stepping into. That might be the only positive takeaway from this story? The NFL used to be a ratings sure-thing. And, yes, many, many people still watch NFL games. But not as many as before. For the second year in a row, NFL ratings have dropped. In 2017, the ratings [went down almost 10%](. In 2016 it was 8%. And before you say that that’s across the board and not just the NFL, consider that the NBA’s ratings are steadily going UP. So it’s definitely a concern for the NFL. And it may be even more concerning now that the Super Bowl ratings are in. This year’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, two big market teams playing a competitive gave (it wasn’t a blowout, not at all), was down 7% from last year, making it the smallest audience for a Super Bowl in 9 years. [Justin Timberlake](’s halftime show was down even more – 9% compared to Lady Gaga’s in 2017. To be fair, MILLIONS of people watched [JT be average]( on Sunday night. But the point here is that he was average as part of something that’s on the downswing. He’s not part of something that’s trending positively. He was part of something greater that’s on the decline. Which means Justin Timberlake cannot claim to have been part of something that was a runaway success. Not when most headlines about the Super Bowl and its ratings involve the words “[slip](”, “[slump](”, and “[tumble](”. He can push aside the sh-tty reviews of his album and claim bias. He can ignore Twitter and other social media snark and call it the work of losers and haters. But these people care about numbers. They are never impervious to numbers. By the numbers then, Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime show was not a win. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 2:46 PM [Mathew Knowles on colorism]( [Tina Knowles, Beyoncé Knowles and Mathew Knowles in 2003](Mathew Knowles is known mostly as our Queen Beyoncé’s [Rogue Relative](. When no one in Beyoncé’s camp is talking, Mathew talks. Mathew f-cks with Beyonce’s master plans and announces things [before they should be announced](C3%A9s-father-report-twins-have-been-born/47261). He’s also a philanderer who had secret love children [while he was married](. Mathew Knowles is messy. So, last week when Lainey sent me an [Ebony article]( where Mathew Knowles admits that he only started dating the Queen Mother, Tina Knowles Lawson, because he thought she was white, I groaned out loud. Mathew cites his “deeply ingrained colorism” as the reason for wanting to date a white woman when he met Tina. This, surprisingly, is not why I groaned. Colorism is an important issue that I have written about extensively (revisit my pieces [here]( and [here]() and I think it needs to be talked about openly in pop culture a lot more. I’m just annoyed that the person sparking this conversation right now is Mathew Knowles, the man who calls out Beyoncé’s supposed “[Jedi mind tricks](” and yet still uses her name to stay relevant every chance he gets. While Mathew does bring up extremely valid points about light-skinned privilege and the music industry and does so by calling out his own biases, he also – because he’s Mathew Knowles— makes some of those points clumsily. Also, you know Miss Tina is somewhere like, “Wait—WHAT? Mathew’s gone rogue again!” I’m going to try to put aside Mathew’s messy ass past for a second and delve into his comments on colorism to Ebony. If you’re wondering why Mathew Knowles was being interviewed by Ebony in the first place, he’s promoting a book called [Racism From The Eyes of A Child](. The fact that [Beyoncé](’s father wrote a book on racism may not come as a surprise to anyone who has heard Solange’s album [A Seat At The Table](. Mathew’s interlude called Dad Was Mad is a rumination on his years growing up in the south during the civil rights movement. He got spit on by the KKK as a kid. He faced outright discrimination from racist white people but he also, as he tells Ebony, dealt with growing up in an environment which fostered self-hatred. “When I was growing up, my mother used to say, “Don’t ever bring no nappy-head Black girl to my house.” In the deep South in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the shade of your Blackness was considered important. So I, unfortunately, grew up hearing that message.” Mathew goes on to describe the “brown paper bag test” at Fisk, a historically black college. Basically, if your skin was darker than a brown paper bag, you wouldn’t get in. This anecdote also alludes to the fact that colorism largely affects black women more than men, considering Mathew Knowles got into Fisk with skin darker than a paper bag and that Mathew felt light-skinned women and/or white women were superior when he wouldn’t even fall into society’s definition of “light-skinned” himself. How often do you see dark-skinned black men with significantly lighter love interests on screen? Or in music videos? Black men can be as dark as Morris Chestnut or Taye Diggs and be sex symbols while their on (and off) screen counterparts have to be the Nia Longs or Sanaa Lathans of the world. Of course, dark-skinned black men face their own heap of stereotypes and prejudices but colorism, especially in the entertainment industry, seems to be targeted more pointedly at black women. According to Mathew, the disparity stems from “eroticized rage.” “I had been conditioned from childhood. With eroticized rage, there was actual rage in me as a Black man, and I saw the White female as a way, subconsciously, of getting even or getting back. There are a lot of Black men of my era that are not aware of this thing.” That sounds like some self-hating f-cked up bullsh-t and it definitely is but Mathew is not wrong about black men of his era. The correlation between white women and success is not new. I wrote about it when Jesse Williams allegedly [divorced Aryn Drake-Lee for Minka Kelly](. [The Daily Beast]( made the parallel between Mathew Knowles’ story and some of Quincy Jones’ comments in that GQ feature we keep yelling at you to read. This is what Quincy Jones told [GQ](: “The interracial thing was part of a revolution, too. Because back in the ’40s and stuff, they would say, ‘You can’t mess with a white man’s money.… Don’t mess with his women.’ We weren’t going to take that sh-t. Charlie Parker, everybody there, was married to a white wife.” Marrying white or “light” was way to get back at The Man. Oh, but that was the 60s and 70s, right? It would be easy to write off Mathew Knowles and Quincy Jones as out-of-touch old men. But, as Stereo Williams for The Daily Beast points out, colorism, “never fully went away. How could it? It had been beaten into the black subconscious since slavery that black was ugly and unlovable.” Ugly and unlovable. That sh-t does get ingrained. It makes you try to straighten and pinch and conform to the acceptable kind of black. I dealt with this kind of entrenched self-doubt my whole childhood – I’m sure I’m still dealing with it. It’s hard to explain so I’ll defer to Ta-Nehesi Coates, as I do often, who summed up internalized colorism so well in his seminal essay, “[Nina Simone’s Face.](” Did we want to be white? I don’t think so… What we wanted was to be on the right end of the paper bag tests. We wanted hazel eyes. We wanted wavy hair. I produced the segment with Sharon Lewis [on The Social yesterday]( that Lainey mentioned in [today’s open](. She’s a Canadian director who has directed over 100 hours of television. Her new film, Brown Girl Begins, is a sci-fi coming of age story starring a young Caribbean woman. Sharon made a point to cast a dark-skinned black actress in the lead because she says there are inherent biases that happen in casting rooms all the time. Sharon says casting directors tend to gravitate to the hazel eyes and wavy hair – sometimes even unconsciously. If we think times are changing because Issa Rae, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o exist, the “voices for a new generation,” as Stereo Williams puts it, are Zendaya, Yara Shihidi, and Amandla Stenberg. I’ll add Zoe Kravitz, Tessa Thompson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw to that list. I love all of these actresses but it can’t go overlooked that they fit a mold of blackness that is palatable, a standard of beauty that is closest to whiteness. It can’t get overlooked that they contribute to a culture that tells certain black women, over and over, that they aren’t worthy or beautiful. Which brings me to Beyoncé. Mathew’s comments about Beyoncé have people fired up. This is, verbatim, what Mathew says to Ebony: Mathew: When it comes to Black females, who are the people who get their music played on pop radio? Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids [Beyoncé and Solange], and what do they all have in common? Interviewer: They’re all lighter skinned. Mathew: Do you think that’s an accident? Interviewer: Of course not! Mathew: So you get it! From there, the headlines have turned into [BEYONCÉS DAD SAYS SHE WOULDN’T BE FAMOUS WITH DARKER SKIN](. Is that really what Mathew says here though? Sure, he could have put it more eloquently and I hate to defend him but he’s making a simple commentary on a very real pattern in the music industry. All of those artists (again, all black women) ARE light-skinned. Is it a coincidence? No. Does that fact belittle Beyoncé’s importance or talent? In my opinion, no. Maybe Destiny’s Child was initially embraced because they had a lead singer with lighter skin but she became BEYONCÉ, QUEEN OF EVERYTHING, ARTIST OF OUR GENERATION, because of her hard work and talent. Light skin won’t give you longevity. Just ask Maya (no disrespect to Maya). We often write about the lack of representation in film and TV but the music industry is far from perfect. Calling out privileges, even the confusing and uncomfortable advantages that exist within marginalized communities, doesn’t have to negate the contributions of the people with those opportunities. What we should be doing – instead of debating about Beyoncé in an alternate reality—is putting pressure on systems and industries that uphold the oppression of dark-skinned black people to do better. Colorism is repulsive, frustrating and downright unfair but pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t going to make it go away. I’ve been trying to pretend Mathew Knowles doesn’t exist and here he is. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 2:22 PM [Privacy Policy]( - [Unsubscribe](