Andy Cohen

Issue dated February 25, 2019: Andy Cohen


Nothing exciting on this week's cover. I had Andy Cohen on the Guessing Game list last week, and here he is with his cute new baby. Half credit? Sure. Seeing Brad and Jennifer in a headline feels like a time warp. I did the math and they broke up *14* years ago. It's interesting to me that at least as far as we know, all three members of the famous love triangle, Brad, Jen and Angelina, are currently single. (Are Brad and Jennifer getting back together? Almost certainly not.) And Jennifer is now 50, which I hope means that we will never see another "Jennifer's pregnant'' cover. People hasn't ever run one, but the other tabloids sure do.

Last year at this time: Issue dated February 26, 2018

The Guessing Game - Updated

What will be on the cover of People this week? My guesses:

George H.W. Bush: The former president died Friday night and several days of ceremonies will start tomorrow. Senator John McCain got a full main cover story when he died a few weeks ago...



... and I'm expecting the former president will be given the same tribute.

Other possibilities:

Quentin Tarantino: Married
Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas: Also got married over the week-end
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Reached a custody agreement
Meghan and Kate: Supposedly they're "feuding," I think it's much ado about nothing
Michael Cohen: Donald's former personal lawyer has been lying to Robert Mueller, before former president Bush died, that was the big news of the week
Christmas at the White House: The decorations are really strange
Carole Middleton: Kate's mother has given her first interview

Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.

Update on Tuesday morning. Click here to see the new cover, featuring Priyanka's wedding.

The Roseanne Show Without Roseanne

Issue dated October 15, 2018: Laurie Metcalf, John Goodman & Sara Gilbert


It's a television cover this week, promoting the new show called The Connors. (I had this show and its stars on a Guessing Game list back in June. Read it here.) When the Roseanne reboot, starring Roseanne, debuted in March, I was skeptical that it would work and called it one of the Things I Don't Care About. (Read that post here.) I was wrong, at least initially. Would the show have continued to draw viewers? We'll never know. Will The Connors work? We'll know soon. The first episode airs October 16.

The A Star Is Born reboot and Gwyneth's wedding were on the Guessing Game list.

Last year at this time: Issue dated October 16, 2017


Two years ago the Brangelina divorce, and Kim Kardashian's robbery in Paris, were the big stories.

Issue dated October 17, 2016

Stop The Presses?

When Brad and Angelina announced their divorce in September, 2016, People had just finalized a new issue with Michael Strahan on the cover. Would the Brangelina news have to wait a week? Nope. At the time the break-up announcement was like a nuclear bomb in pop culture, and People rushed out a new issue six days in advance:

Issue dated October 10, 2016


Now Jennifer Aniston has announced that her second marriage is over. Will her break-up with Justin Theroux get the same "Stop The Presses" treatment? Probably not, although it's almost certain to be the main cover story on the next issue, which would normally be posted Wednesday morning. If the new issue pops up early, I'll post it here.

Prince William

Issue dated October 2, 2017: Prince William


I've been on vacation this week and didn't do a Guessing Game post. If I had, Selena Gomez's transplant and the Fergie/Josh break-up would probably have been my best guesses. I wasn't expecting a cover focusing on William; right now Harry and Meghan are getting the most press. On the other hand, royal baby #3 didn't get the full cover treatment, maybe this is a slightly redirected make-up for that.  

Last year at this time: Issue dated October 3, 2016


This cover had just been finalized when the Brangelina break-up news broke last year at this time, and Michael Strahan's "untold story" got swallowed up in the coverage. I wrote about it here and here.

Brad Pitt, Wow

Forget the new People cover. Check out the three versions of GQ Style's Summer 2017 issue:

Stop The Presses

October 1 update: I've now read the actual article in the Oct. 10 "Why She Left" issue and what I originally wrote in this post was right - People didn't have "The Real Story." The article was pretty generic, actually, and the magazine rushed itself into print before the 2nd bombshell exploded, which is that there was an altercation on a private plane and Brad is being investigated by Child Services and the FBI. As I write this, there's news that Brad and Angie have reached some kind of temporary custody agreement.

Original post:
When I wrote my previous post, about the Brangelina divorce being the People cover story this week, I had a brief moment of wondering if People could really get the story written and published by Wednesday morning. I figured they'd go for it, stopping the presses and scrambling like mad to get the info out there in print as soon as possible.

I was wrong about that. The cover that posted online Wednesday morning was clearly the original "pre-bombshell" version, with no reference at all to the big news:

Issue dated October 3, 2016: Michael Strahan


According to The Cut, at New York magazine, the timing is not coincidental but a carefully executed media strategy by Angelina:

By filing for divorce on a Monday, Angie left [Brad] with few avenues to make his case to the public: The major tabloids — People, Us Weekly, OK! — all go to press Monday night. The New York Post reports that none of the tabloids have Brangelina stories for this week; they won’t be able to “exploit the explosive and popular news story until Sept. 28, when next week’s issues start to hit newsstands.” As Lainey Lui at Lainey Gossip explains, “This was all was part of [Angelina’s] plan, as always, to control the media, to get her piece out there first, so that she can come strong in negotiations. If he gives her sole physical custody of the kids, she’ll shut it down, and all this can just be ‘gossip.’” Read the article here. 

(Apparently the tabloids, including People, actually finalize each issue on Monday night.)

People wasn't playing by Angie's rules, however, and they did scramble like mad to get next week's issue out six days early:

Issue dated October 10, 2016: Brangelina Divorce


They didn't really have THE REAL STORY, however, because this cover was clearly finalized before this morning's bombshell went public, which is that Brad Pitt is being investigated for child abuse. (Read that story here.)

Final thoughts, at least for now:

What's next for Brad and Angie? No way to know, but a short announcement that Brad has checked himself into rehab for substance abuse wouldn't surprise me.

George and Amal Clooney get a topline story on the Michael Strahan cover, in honor of their second anniversary, just a few weeks after Brad and Angie's. At the time of the two big weddings in 2014, I would have said that Brangelina had a better shot at going the distance, but so far George and Amal appear to be doing just fine.

Finally, Michael Strahan. Is he annoyed that his big moment in the spotlight got swallowed up by the Brangelina divorce story? Probably.

Irreconcilable Differences

Is there any question what the cover story on tomorrow's new People magazine will be? Just kidding, but if you've been under a rock since mid-morning central time, here's a hint. These stories are all currently posted at people.com:

• Brad Pitt Breaks Silence on Divorce from Angelina Jolie: "What Matters Most Now Is the Well-Being of Our Kids"
• Inside Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's Final Months Together
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's Most Memorable Red Carpet Moments
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Divorce: Couple Separated Just 5 Days Ago, Court Filing Says
• Brad Pitt Fled to France Amid Fight with Angelina Jolie This Year, Source Says
• A Look Back at Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie's Best Collaborations
• The Way They Were: Brad and Angelina Jolie Pitt's Most PDA-Filled Moments

And most intriguingly, this:

• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's Split Has Nothing to Do with His Allied Costar Marion Cotillard, Source Says 

If you change "Angelina Jolie" to Jennifer Aniston, "Allied" to Mr & Mrs Smith, and "Marion Cotillard" to Angelina Jolie, you will have time-warped right back to 2005, when Pitt and Aniston announced they were separating and wanted everyone to believe it had nothing to do with Angelina. (Allied is a movie coming out in November, starring Pitt and Cotillard.)

I admit, in common with many other people, I was shocked by this. As a blogger who writes about celebrities and keeps an arch eye on pop culture, I know that from Brangelina to the Bachelor to the Real Housewives of New Jersey, we don't really know anything about what's really going on in the lives of famous people, but still. I thought Brad and Angie would go the distance. They appeared, at least, to be in sync with each other and committed to raising their family of six kids. To be fair, that may have been the case for most of the time from 2005 until 5 days ago, or whenever it was that things fell apart.

So now it starts. The tabloids and other media have already initiated their Celebrity Divorce 101 protocols and this story will be competing with the New York/New Jersey bombings and the presidential election for airtime and pixel space for the next few days at least. I haven't seen a specific quote from Pitt or Jolie asking for "privacy at this difficult time," but I'm sure one's out there. Jennifer Aniston hasn't been heard from either but she would hardly be human if she isn't feeling just a teensy weensy bit of schadenfreude. Read my past musing about Brangelina here, here and here.   

Finally, is there anything else going on in the world? Well, yes. Apparently former president George H.W. Bush is giving serious thought to voting for Hillary. 

Brangelina: How It Began

Seeing Angelina Jolie on the cover of People's year-end review issue got me thinking about the whole Brangelina thing, which started 10 years ago. A quick review: Brad and Angie filmed Mr. and Mrs. Smith in 2004, and although there were rumors during filming about how well the two co-stars were getting alone, in public things were officially fine between Brad and Jen. People reassured the world with a sidebar headline on the cover of the January 17, 2005 issue, announcing "Brad and Jen's Romantic Getaway" and this item inside: 

From the January 17, 2005 issue: 
If you believed the rumors, the four-year marriage of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt was, if not on the rocks, veering dangerously close to the guardrail. There was Jen at the L.A. airport late last month—without her hubby or her diamond-studded wedding band. Earlier there she was shopping—alone again—in London, where she'd been shooting her new thriller Derailed while Brad was off promoting Ocean's Twelve. Even after her rep Stephen Huvane insisted, "Everything is fine with Jennifer and Brad," the naysayers persisted. 

The latest sighting of the couple (yes, together at last!)—in warm embrace on the Caribbean isle of Anguilla over New Year's weekend—might just change their minds. A source close to the action says Aniston, 35, and Pitt, 41, "were quite lovey-dovey, basically all over each other, hugging and kissing." The couple had been hanging out since Dec. 31 with Jen's former Friends costar Courteney Cox Arquette and husband David Arquette at a private villa. "On New Year's Day," says the source, "Brad and Jen went on a little speedboat ride with Courteney," whose daughter, 7- month-old Coco, stayed behind with a nanny. Later that day Brad was seen tooling around on a moped. Alas, by Jan. 4, the romantic reunion was over: Pitt was off to Miami to attend the Orange Bowl, while Aniston was due back in L.A. to start a new movie. 

The following week, things fell apart and the Brangelina/Jen triangle dominated pop culture for the rest of the year. Here's how it played out through the birth of daughter Shiloh on May 27, 2006, as seen through the filter of People magazine cover stories:  

January 24, 2005


January 31, 2005


April 11, 2005


May 9, 2005


June 20, 2005


July 11, 2005


July 18, 2005


August 15, 2005


September 5, 2005


October 31, 2005


December 19, 2005


December 26, 2005


January 23, 2006


January 30, 2006


February 6, 2006


June 12, 2006


June 19, 2006


Did anything else happen in 2005? Actually, yes. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married and had a baby; Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore got married, Charles and Camilla got married, and the first stories about Kate Middleton as a possible royal girlfriend started to appear. Johnny Carson, Peter Jennings and Pope John Paul II died and in late August, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

Angie's A Dame

Actually, she's an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George. Got that? What does it mean? It's in honor of Mrs. Pitt's "campaigning against rape in war zones and services to UK foreign policy." Wow, who knew?

Anyway, I love this picture:



According to the Daily Mail, Brad and the kids were at the palace too but not in any of the official pictures. Read the story here.

Still Thinking About Brangelina

Yes, Brad and Angie really did get married in France, almost a week ago now. Thoughts:

No pictures = no news. Although it was really big news yesterday (at 2.30 p.m. I counted seven separate Brangelina items on people.com) the frenzy has died down faster than I would have predicted. The reason for this, presumably, is that there are no available pictures of the event and no video. Although reporters like Lama Hasan at ABC have been sent to France and are reporting from outside the gates of the castle, there's not much to report on that wasn't covered yesterday.

How's Jennifer taking it? For better or for worse, the former Mrs. Brad Pitt is forever locked into a pop culture triangle with the new Mrs. Brad Pitt and her husband. Although it's almost certainly a coincidence, the big wedding news broke the day after not only the premiere of Aniston's new movie (Life of Crime, which opens today) but also the very funny Friends reunion segment on Jimmy Kimmel Wednesday night. And yes, Jennifer's moment in the spotlight did get swallowed up in the tsunami of wedding coverage.

Why five days? So why did the Pitts pick this particular week-end, then wait five days to announce the news? No one knows for sure but Soraya Nadia McDonald at the Washington Post has an intriguing theory: it's because of the NFL.

First off, the Hollywood press was fully occupied by the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday and the Emmys on Monday, two glitzy, star-studded events where the couple wouldn’t be missed... 
 Normally, the Emmys are in September, and they air on Sunday. This year, they were bumped up a month and to a Monday because of one thing: professional football. The big networks (NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox) air the Emmys by rotation, and this year, the duty fell to NBC, which is also the home of Sunday Night Football. There was no way NBC was going to dump perfectly good football money for the Emmys, nor bother putting it up against Monday Night Football later in the fall.

So that’s how we ended up with back-to-back award shows, the Emmys airing on a Monday for the first time in 38 years, and no one paying attention to Hollywood’s biggest couple. 

Waiting until Thursday also screwed the tabloids and McDonald says this was not a coincidence. New issues are published on Wednesday and start to appear on newstands on Thursday. By the time next week's editions are published the wedding will be old news, especially if no pictures are released. Really. Read the entire article here. 

Who benefited most from this whole thing? Josh Shaw gets my vote. Who's Josh Shaw? He's the USC football player who jumped off a second-story balcony to save his nephew who was drowning in a pool. He sprained both ankles in the process and was hailed as a hero. Except he didn't and wasn't. Questions about what really happened started to bubble up on Tuesday and by Wednesday afternoon Shaw had confessed. He made the whole up. He also hired a big-deal criminal defense attorney, which of course made it look as though there had to be more to the story. This was covered in detail on the Thursday morning news shows, but by the time they went off the air the wedding news had broken and the mainstream media quickly pivoted. People in the sports world, and bloggers (including me,) are still curious about how Josh Shaw really hurt himself, but I'd guess he's very grateful to Brad and Angelina for getting married and blasting him out of the spotlight, at least temporarily.  

Keeping It Secret

When John Kennedy Jr. pulled off his secret wedding back in 1996, someone, whose name I don't remember, was quoted as saying, admiringly, "John Kennedy could run the CIA." I have somewhat the same feeling this morning about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

They got married in France on Saturday and the world didn't find out until this morning, a very impressive act of secret-keeping for one of the world's most famous couples. Between Twitter, the morning news shows and the tabloid covers I read at the supermarket, not to mention people.com, I keep a pretty close eye on mainstream entertainment gossip and there was nothing, absolutely nothing about this anywhere until it was officially announced this morning by a publicist. So far I haven't seen any pictures from the wedding, although I'm assuming a few will be released eventually. In the meantime, this picture of Brad wearing his wedding ring, taken in England today, will have to do.



So congrats to Brad and Angie, not so much for the wedding as for the private low-key way they pulled it off. They're not really as important or as wonderful as their press coverage makes it seem, but still. This very private wedding is a nice classy contrast to that other Americans-in-Europe wedding that happened in Italy a few weeks ago.