Harry and Meghan

In article dated today, June 24, the Wall Street Journal ponders Harry and Meghan's place in the world: 

LOS ANGELES—Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had been out of the U.K. for nearly two years when they began work on a project they believed could transform them from former royals to Hollywood power players.

The subject of endless rumors and gossip, the couple felt qualified to tackle the thorny topic of misinformation. A documentary would cement Harry and Meghan as serious creative types and help shed their reputation as exiles from the House of Windsor trading family dirt for eyeballs.

A team assigned to the job at the pair’s Los Angeles-based production company, Archewell, had questions for “H” and “M,” as the Sussexes are known to their employees. Would the misinformation project be a feature film or a series? Who would host it? Would it be historical or contemporary? Would Harry or Meghan appear in it? Would Meghan discuss her bitter history with British tabloids—and if not, who would want to watch? 

The couple had few answers, according to people familiar with the inner-workings of Archewell and Harry and Meghan’s deals with streamers. The misinformation documentary soon met the fate of other Archewell projects, and faded away.

Prince Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood foray is looking like a flop. They arrived in Southern California three years ago with Duke and Duchess titles and plans to capitalize on a cash-rich streaming business desperate for star power to lure subscribers. The big-ticket deals that followed—$100 million at Netflix NFLX 0.36%increase; green up pointing triangle, more than $20 million at Spotify—have led to more cancellations and rejections than produced shows.

The couple showed they could mine their personal stories. Prince Harry’s memoir “Spare” became a bestseller and the six-part documentary they produced for Netflix about their break with the royal family proved popular. That aside, they have struggled to make content that stretched beyond their own experiences.

The graveyard of video projects they hoped to make includes an animated children’s show called “Pearl” that was canceled by Netflix, as well as at least two TV ideas that the streaming service rejected within the past year, people familiar with Harry and Meghan’s projects said. Netflix is unlikely to renew the couple’s deal, which runs through 2025, the people said.

The Spotify pact produced a podcast, “Archetypes,” about the stereotypes that hold women back. A second season was discussed but eventually nixed. Spotify and the couple recently announced they have agreed to part ways.

People who have worked with the pair say their Sussex-upon-Sunset outpost was undermined by their inexperience as producers and trouble finding material consistent with their brand, as well as problems beyond their control, including a retrenchment in the entertainment and podcasting businesses.

An Archewell spokeswoman said, “New companies often make changes in their start up phase, both with people and strategy, and we are no exception. We’re more equipped, focused and energized than ever before.” She said the company recently hired a new head of scripted content, actress and producer Tracy Ryerson.

A Netflix spokeswoman said the company valued its Archewell partnership, and noted that “Harry & Meghan” was its biggest documentary debut. “We’ll continue to work together on a number of projects,” she said.

When Archewell and Spotify announced their split, the companies said in a joint written statement that they “mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together.”

When they struck deals with Netflix and Spotify in 2020, streaming services were booming and executives were rushing to secure content and feed consumer demand, at any cost. The Sussexes joined Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and others who fielded offers in Hollywood with few guidelines on what would come next.

The Covid-19 pandemic bolstered the streaming audience, with subscribers stuck at home, but also interrupted production for projects in their early stages of development, including some of the Sussexes’ work.

Today, streaming boom times have given way to an era of slower growth and unpredictability. Both Netflix and Spotify have cut shows and movies to trim costs. Both have been underwhelmed by the lack of productivity by the Sussexes, people familiar with their perspectives say.

'“Once you’ve launched your bombshell, what’s next?” said Andrew Morton, the longtime chronicler of the royal family.

Archewell employees and associates say the company often lacks direction, and that its founders at times seem surprised by the work required to finish entertainment projects. Most potential initiatives, they said, follow a similar route: Big idea, subpar execution.

In May 2022, the head of communications at Archewell and the head of communications at the couple’s nonprofit foundation stepped down. In the following months, several others followed, including the company’s head of audio and Mandana Dayani, president of the entire operation.

In March, Ben Browning, the film producer hired to oversee Archewell’s content slate on the strength of such credits as the Oscar-winning “Promising Young Woman,” left the company to return to his prior job. Archewell’s head of marketing parted ways with the company, as did its head of scripted content.

Hot start

Harry and Meghan arrived in Hollywood the subject of transcontinental fascination. They were the first senior royals since King Edward VIII to walk away from their official duties. They had famous friends in stars like Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey, both of whom attended their 2018 nuptials.

After forging the lucrative deal with Netflix, the couple’s relationship with the company was bolstered by a friendship with its co-CEO and their neighbor in Montecito, Calif., Ted Sarandos.

“Harry & Meghan,” the fly-on-the-wall documentary about the couple’s love story, was the first major project produced under the deal. It featured intimate moments between the pair—Harry on the tears of his mother, Princess Diana; Meghan on her miscarriage—and delved into British colonialism as well as the racism the couple experienced.

The documentary opened the Sussexes up to criticism, including the moment when Meghan said she didn’t expect to curtsy before the queen.

Archewell employees felt the future of their Netflix deal hinged on the documentary’s success, and the project created tension inside the company. Harry and Meghan weighed in on edits, though at times were overruled, people involved in the project said.

Following up has proven difficult. Their second Netflix video project, a docuseries called “Live to Lead” about global leaders and activists, failed to reach the streamer’s list of Top 10 shows.

Other proposed projects seemed designed to replicate successful shows already on Netflix, such as a sitcom described as “Emily in Paris,” but about a man, and a family-friendly TV show about gay characters that felt similar to the fan favorite “Heartstopper.” Netflix said no to both, people familiar with the matter said.

After booming during the early part of the pandemic, Netflix’s subscriber growth began to stagnate as streaming competition ramped up and consumers resumed more regular lives. Netflix is still recovering from a sharp drop in its stock in 2022 after it announced its first quarter of subscriber losses in a decade.

The downturn rattled Hollywood, leading to what is now called the “Netflix Correction,” a period in which studios began to prune their catalogs and become choosier about which projects to back. A Hollywood writers’ strike has put more pressure on entertainment companies to justify big payouts, and has closed writing rooms industrywide.

Executives at Netflix have groused about Archewell’s output, according to people familiar with the matter, and feel that the success of the “Harry & Meghan” documentary is all the company has to show for the deal.

Today, one Archewell project is nearing completion at Netflix: a documentary series on the Invictus Games, a tournament Harry founded for wounded veterans after serving two tours with the British Army in Afghanistan.

Harry and Meghan are also developing a TV show for Netflix called “Bad Manners” based on Miss Havisham, a Charles Dickens character from “Great Expectations.” The prequel would recast the lonely spinster as a strong woman living in a patriarchal society, though it is unclear whether the show will get a green light from Netflix.

Archewell associates say Barack and Michelle Obama’s post-White House Hollywood venture, which also included deals at Netflix and Spotify, was the template followed by Harry and Meghan. The two couples worked with the same attorney on the deals. 

The Obamas have been more productive. Work by their Higher Ground production company for Netflix has included movies such as “Leave the World Behind,” starring Julia Roberts, and Kevin Hart’s “Fatherhood,” as well as a child-oriented show “Waffles+Mochi” and documentaries including “American Factory.”

New struggles

Meghan’s media productivity has largely been concentrated at Spotify, and the road to getting “Archetypes” on the air was rocky. When the Duchess first began working with the audio service, Archewell didn’t have an employee focused on audio projects, and instead, a public-relations representative initially led Archewell’s work with Spotify, people familiar with the company said.

The audio company’s executives grew frustrated with the amount of time it took Archewell to conceptualize an idea for Meghan’s podcast and assemble a production team. 

Ultimately, Archewell hired a head of audio, who worked in concert with members of Spotify’s Gimlet unit on podcasting ideas. The Gimlet team helped Meghan compile a list of potential guests, and Spotify helped build a podcast studio in the couple’s mansion, said people familiar with the situation. (News Corp’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a content partnership with Spotify’s Gimlet Media unit.)

Choosing the right kind of guest was often fraught. Meghan wrote Taylor Swift a personal letter asking her to come on the podcast. The pop star declined, through a representative.

Meghan would often ask for changes late in the editing process, at times recruiting senior Spotify executives, including then-Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff, to call producers and push them to make changes.

The “Archetypes” podcast launched in August of 2022 and went to the top of Spotify’s podcast charts in its premiere week. It halted the release of new episodes in September during the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II, Harry’s grandmother.

Given the show’s success, the audio company and Archewell executives began discussing a second season. Those talks stalled for months before Spotify told Archewell that the show wouldn’t be renewed.

Archewell didn’t make good on all of the terms of the Spotify deal, which included each of the Sussexes voicing and being directly involved in a podcast. Harry, in particular, struggled to land on an idea.

He explored a podcast on veterans but couldn’t find a compelling way to tackle the subject in podcast form. He tossed around subjects such as misinformation and his point of view as someone new to living in America, and at one point considered co-hosting a show with comedian Hasan Minhaj.

Ed Owens, author of the book, “After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?” said Harry tried to return to subjects he previously focused on, but without the foundation of being a working royal. “They haven’t found the one area that they can really call their own,” Owens said.

Podcasts had their own industry correction. Facing difficulty turning a profit even on popular shows, Spotify has laid off about 800 workers so far this year and has canceled several shows, in addition to “Archetypes.” Spotify continues to make original podcasts, but with a bent toward conversational shows that don’t require heavy editing and high-touch production.

This month, Spotify and the Sussexes’s audio company announced they were ending their partnership. WME, the talent agency that recently signed Meghan, said at the time that the Archewell team was proud of “Archetypes” and that the Duchess continues to develop content for that show’s audience on another platform. Archewell executives hope working with WME will bring about new opportunities, from brand partnerships to podcasts.

Next episode

For Harry and Meghan, the broader streaming slowdown couldn’t come at a more uncertain time. They have indicated they want to move on from talking about the Royal Family following a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Netflix documentary and Prince Harry’s book.

Revelations from these projects appear to have cemented the rift between the Duke and his father, King Charles III. The couple was asked to move out of their Frogmore Cottage home, and while the King invited the Sussexes to his coronation, Harry attended by himself, sat in the third row behind his older brother and was in the country only briefly.

Given their distance from the crown, the sheen Harry and Meghan once lent show-business projects is dimming. It helped cost them what was intended to be their first project with Netflix, an animated show about powerful women of history called “Pearl.”

The children’s show was developed when Meghan was still a working royal. It was created with help from David Furnish, who knew the royal family through his husband, Elton John. When the couple left the Palace and signed their Netflix deal, “Pearl” was the first show announced.

Netflix canceled it in May 2022. Executives decided that few children would care if the show they were watching had been produced by a duchess. (This is the article in its entirety.)

"... darkly comic flim-flammery and low-bore corruption": Let's Talk About The Jussie Smollett Case

Is there something strange about years that end in the number *1* that causes my blogger juices to go awry? In 2011, I posted exactly one post, on December 31, and I did only slightly better this year, with 9 posts in January.  I've missed my blog, however and there will more posts to come. 

To start with, here's an editorial from the Chicago Tribune, in which the Editorial Board ponders the meaning of the Jussie Smollett case: 

Titled "The Tawdry Case of Jussie Smollett Had Comic Relief, But Was Not a Victimless Affair," the editorial was published on December 12, three days after Smollett was found guilty of five felonies. This is the editorial in its entirety: 

The recent trials we've been following have contained enough human pain to make us shudder: The Kyle Rittenhouse case involved two dead Americans; the matter in Georgia was about who caused the death of the 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery; the yet-unresolved Ghislaine Maxwell affair has a backdrop of the cynical abuse of scores, if not hundreds, of impressionable young girls and women over many years.

By those standards, the case of Jussie Smollett has been comic relief.

Smollett, a B-list TV actor, was not accused of either killing or hurting anyone. His trumped-up saga of a deliberately staged, "racially motivated" attack usable for the purposes of personal promotion fits squarely into the Cook County tradition of darkly comic flim-flammery and low-bore corruption.

It matches up well with some of the cases famously recounted on the pages of this newspaper a hundred years ago by the crime reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose trial-room notebook would form the basis for the musical "Chicago." Watkins would have loved writing about Smollett.

Once it became clear something fishy was in play, a conclusion reached Thursday evening by a jury of Smollett's peers, this was a trial that was fun for everyone to discuss.

How was the scheme concocted? Were the two bodybuilding brothers, apparently Smollett's accomplices, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Smollett's Hamlet? Or were they closer to reincarnations of the classic "Saturday Night Live!" duo of Hans und Franz, here to pump anybody up? This case had a tabloid-friendly unspooling, with new twists and turns arriving almost every day.

But despite all the gossipy Tweets and chatter and opinions, there were real victims here. That would be everyone in the future who actually becomes the victim of a violent hate crime, being as Smollett's phony version only seeds needless doubt for the real incidents that surely will follow.

His idea of exploiting such an attack for publicity certainly worked with politicians on Twitter, especially since Smollett had plenty of connections and the immediate backing of a huge PR firm, thanks to his network, Fox Entertainment.

"This was an attempted modern day lynching," tweeted Kamala Harris at the time, praising Smollett's kindness. "This attack was not 'possibly' homophobic," wrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, going after anyone holding back judgment, "it was a racist and homophobic attack." "What happened today to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country," wrote Joe Biden.

Biden was right about that. Just not for the reasons he thought.

Even as these rushed statements appeared on social media, Chicago police had to get down to the nitty gritty of what exactly happened. By all courtroom accounts, the cops took this crime seriously, expending huge amounts of resources on trying to find who had attacked Smollett. Even Smollett said he had been treated with dignity and respect during the initial stages of the investigation. Chicago police get a lot of criticism, including plenty leveled by this page. In this matter, they behaved admirably.

With the aid of cameras and other clues, police quickly figured out all was not as it seemed, and the evidence for this all being faked was passed to Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx. That's where things went off the rails, but not necessarily for the reasons most of the media is saying.

It's tempting to see the Smollett case, whose cause was backed by the attorney and influence peddler Tina Tchen, as another egregious example of Foxx's go-soft approach and reluctance to prosecute criminals, especially since Smollett had made Chicago look like a haven for violent racists and homophobes.

But cooler, nonpartisan heads can understand that with all Chicago has to worry about in the sphere of crime, a first-time offense likely to result in probation probably was not worth allowing to suck up resources that could be spent on finding the actual killers on our streets. Foxx's office was right to offer Smollett a quick deal, and correct to see that there were more important criminals for them to worry about.

But Foxx made one crucial mistake. She didn't require Smollett to admit his guilt and apologize as part of his deal. He should have offered to do that: Had he done so, he would have avoided four felony convictions on his record and, over time, he likely could have resumed his career. But he did not do anything of the kind.

And that's where Chicagoans both pragmatic and invested in fairness grew incensed, how a special prosecutor became involved and, frankly, how we ended where we ended up on Thursday evening when the jury delivered its verdict.

We know that people who are not on a TV show and friendly with politicians like Harris don't get both a sweetheart deal from the prosecutor and the chance to walk around town protesting their innocence. At that point, the Smollett case became about special favors in a city with an egregious history of them. And thanks to the jury, he ended up the loser, pending any appeals.

Smollett wasted a lot of time of some very busy people who have far more important issues to worry about than him. He embarrassed the politicians who supported him and he didn't respect his own fans. Sure, he probably didn't think it would ever come to all this, but he still didn't have the guts to turn off the machine when only he could. Shame on him.

Still, we haven't changed our mind about the limited severity of this crime, the hoopla notwithstanding, and we've no wish to see Smollett languish behind bars. We'd rather he admitted responsibility, got some help and performed meaningful public service.

Ideally right here in Chicago, a city whose reputation he slandered.

Tribune reporter William Lee, in a column written after the verdict, says the Smollett story reeked from the very beginning:

The Jussie Smollett story reeked from the moment this crime reporter laid eyes on it. To paraphrase “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah, there was a certain part of Smollett’s story that was always a little weird. Maybe you felt the same way. I know a lot of street reporters did in those early days. In all my years on the job, I’d never seen a threat letter written from newspaper clippings like some 1980s TV crime drama.

I won’t go into a full recap as most of us have already heard the details a million times, but the basic contradictions of Smollett’s infamous 2 a.m. Subway sandwich run have been masterfully laid out by Noah and Dave Chappelle. But you don’t have to be a comedian to see the absurdity of two well-prepared white racists successfully carrying out an attack during a chance encounter with their target on an empty downtown street in the middle of the night during the coldest week of 2019.

The former “Empire” actor’s nearly three-year journey from beloved victim to pariah took a step toward its conclusion Thursday when a Cook County jury found the actor guilty of five of six counts related to making a false report to police. Listening to the verdict, I was instantly transported back to that cold, prepandemic January morning when I awakened to a television news report of the attack. In hindsight, I’m proud of the fact that while other publications’ headlines blared that Smollett had been the victim of a hate crime, the Tribune’s first story on the incident, by reporter Tracy Swartz and me, was more subdued: “Cops look into report of assault on actor.”

As a longtime crime reporter, I’m loath to speak on active crime stories, but holes began appearing in the Smollett story within the first two hours of working on it. It seemed very clear from the jump that Smollett’s camp gave his version to friendly outlets to get his narrative out, despite assertions that he didn’t want any public attention. The first report was posted to ThatGrapeJuice.net, a celebrity website that somehow had exclusive details of the alleged Chicago attack — the attackers’ ski masks and the noose placed around Smollett’s neck. TMZ followed with new details that the attackers were two white men, along with the racist and homophobic slurs and the now-famous “This is MAGA country” comment. The story also claimed that Smollett suffered a fractured rib, which police later refuted.

I read each story three times during my ride to the newsroom that day and by the time I stepped off the bus, I knew the whole thing sounded off and warned two of my editors about the coming avalanche and that we needed to be careful writing about it. Smollett wasn’t only a handsome young rising star with a hit TV show filmed in Chicago, he was an activist who used his celebrity to champion gay and Black causes. It didn’t take long for A-list celebrities and politicians to share messages of support for Smollett.

The story got kicked into high gear when then-President Donald Trump publicly acknowledged the attack, prompting me to shout the F-word before I could stop myself. A shout-out from a sitting president meant that Smollett’s saga — with its numerous early red flags and strange turns — would remain in the spotlight until its bitter end. The incident thrust Chicago back into the national spotlight for all the worst reasons. We’d gone from a city that launched one American president to being a city constantly attacked by his successor to score cheap brownie points with red state followers.

There were other local ramifications. The case exposed a growing rift between Chicago police and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who earned their eternal enmity for dropping charges against Smollett that March, despite what authorities considered a solid criminal case.

I’ll always recall how Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Supt. Eddie Johnson and Cmdr. Ed Wodnicki were barely able to contain their rage to reporters after news broke over the dropped charges. Police had been suspicious of Smollett’s story early on, critical of the fact that he continued wearing the noose — a feared universal symbol of racial hatred — so that responding officers would see it. And of course there was Smollett’s initial hesitancy to turn over phone evidence that theoretically could have led to his attacker.

Within days, investigators learned the identity of brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who caught a ride-hailing service near the scene. Until the brothers returned from Nigeria in February, sources said, police had one directive: Treat Smollett as a victim until the facts suggest otherwise. For weeks, police kept up the charade as they continued their investigation. The rest is history. Despite the comedy of errors in this tale, it was never a happy one to cover. Even with the prospect of it being a hoax, I was sympathetic to the actor, unsure whether the incident was a display of avarice and ego, or a cry for help by someone suffering a breakdown.

Despite the hot-button nature of the incident, this was a low-stakes Class 4 felony case, and the fact that no one had actually been injured, aside from a bruise under Smollett’s right eye, this story seemed destined to be forgotten. But Smollett broke a cardinal rule: He went into a city that wasn’t his own and loudly proclaimed “Your town wronged me.” Cops in any city would have been put under tremendous pressure to solve the case of an assaulted star. And despite the effort and attention, he wouldn’t admit his falsehood, with the evidence against him mounting. In the end, Smollett was responsible for derailing his own career, reducing his own reputation to ashes and playing for a fool all of those who came to his aid. And now he has been found guilty of what many of us suspected all along.

He should be offered forgiveness and be able to move on with his life and career, after his contrition. Here in Chicago, we have our own problems. None of them are helped by a celebrity coming to town and crying wolf.

Click here to read previous posts about Jussie Smollett. 

Jussie Smollett Indicted On 16 Counts

Jussie Smollett indicted by a Grand Jury on 16 counts after allegedly lying to police about being the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime. @cbschicago https://t.co/PGYGkkv7HH

— Charlie De Mar (@CharlieDeMar) March 8, 2019

See previous posts about Smollett here and here.

A Hollywood Hoax? - Updated

Issue dated February 27, 2019


I admit I'm fascinated by the Jussie Smollett case and now it's the cover story on the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter. The article is not unsympathetic to Smollett and ponders what may have led him to concoct a hoax, if in fact he did:

Debbie Allen, who directed Smollett in a 2015 episode of Empire, admitted at the Women’s Image Awards that she doesn’t know what to feel because she knows the actor personally. “I’m just disturbed that something has happened to him, that he would do this, if he has in fact done this,” she said. Over Oscar weekend, one Hollywood insider who has known Smollett and his family for decades told THR, “He’s a good guy, but he’s also an actor, and actors sometimes crave attention, and that comes out in weird ways.”

Apparently Smollett was well-liked at Empire:

...To say that Smollett had been well liked on set and by network and studio executives does not do his previous reputation justice. Many of his colleagues, who would only speak on background, call him one of the most popular castmembers on the show. They cite his collaborative nature, warm demeanor and exceptional work ethic. One executive who spoke to THR seemed close to tears when wrestling with the possibility that Smollett faked the whole thing. "I'm trying to filter all this information through the experiences I've had with him," says a high-ranking show source who worked closely with Smollett, "and it doesn't connect." While their reactions to the arrest vary, one theme does emerge: None of his co-workers saw this coming.

I've said before here in the blog that fame in America is not for the faint of heart. Was trying to stay famous, or trying to get more famous, behind Jussie's alleged hoax?

One question is whether the pressures and anxieties of modern fame played any role in Smollett's seemingly inexplicable behavior. "One of the darkest corners of fame is that it becomes addictive," says Donna Rockwell, a clinical psychologist who specializes in fame and celebrity, "and then you are so afraid of becoming a has-been or yesterday's news that you might do something desperate."

...Then came Empire in 2015, the kind of white-hot success that Jussie had no doubt been imagining for himself since childhood. He was cast as Jamal, a sensitive R&B singer and black sheep of the show's dynastic musical family. Total audience numbers grew by 10 million viewers over the course of the first season to 23.1 million and a 9.3 in the 18-to-49 demo when the last episode aired, making it the highest-rated broadcast freshman season since Grey's Anatomy a full decade earlier. The first tie-in soundtrack sold 2 million equivalent units and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard. And with songs produced by hitmakers Timbaland and Rodney Jerkins, Smollett was easily the musical breakout of the cast. He got a deal with Columbia.

But with success came added expectations and pressure. His private life was no longer his own. Empire execs held meetings, sometimes without Smollett present, where his sexuality was discussed, according to media reports. The year Empire debuted, in 2015, Smollett went on Ellen. He deliberately avoided addressing his sexual orientation during the audience participation portion of the show, but afterward approached Ellen DeGeneres and the two spoke backstage. Smollett told DeGeneres that he had "never been in the closet" but also never proactively said he was gay. That second interview, which DeGeneres later integrated into her broadcast, was widely accepted as Smollett's coming-out moment. In 2017, several nude pictures, purportedly of Smollett, were passed around on the social media platform Tumblr.

The article ends with this: 

Smollett has remained silent since his Feb. 21 hearing. "There's an incredible amount of pressure on people to stay relevant, to stay white hot in celebrity," says psychologist Rockwell. "To just be a so-so actor isn't enough. With child actors, this is embedded in their psyche from an early age. It would be more frightening to a child star than someone who didn't start that young. They're always afraid that this could be the end." There's no doubt that Smollett is feeling the white-hot light of fame now. It just may not be the kind of light he had envisioned for himself. (Read the article here.) 

I wish I had some pithy words of wisdom to tie this story up in a nice little bow but I don't. Based on everything I've read so far, my perception is that Smollett did indeed stage this hoax and the police appear to have enough evidence to nail him for it. He could very well be going to jail and that's just based on the false police report. There's also the matter of the threatening letter. In the press conference last week Chicago Police Superintendent Johnson stated that Jussie sent the letter to himself although that hasn't been confirmed by the FBI. 

Smollett is scheduled to be in court again on March 14 and I'm wondering what his lawyers are saying to him as they prepare for that day. Do they feel they can offer a credible defense if the case were to go to trial, or are they gently trying to get him to avoid a trial by pleading guilty? My guess is it's the latter. A couple of weeks ago his lawyers tried to derail the grand jury by saying they had "new information," a "hail mary" maneuver that didn't work. The grand jury met the next day and in the press conference the day after that Police Command Edward Wodnicki, who led the investigation, said there was no new information. Do Jussie's lawyers have any new information now? Maybe. 

Finally, at least for now, last night the Osundairo brothers issued an apology through their lawyer:

Jussie Smollett Update: Attorney for Osundairo brothers released the following statement on their behalf. #Jussiesmollett @cbschicago pic.twitter.com/EMIOFZTH9Q

— Charlie De Mar (@CharlieDeMar) March 1, 2019

You can read my first post about Jussie Smollet here; click here for previous posts about fame.

Updated on Friday, March 8:

EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of workers at Northwestern Hospital may have been fired for improperly reviewing the medical records of Jussie Smollett, who was treated at the emergency room after he claimed he had been attacked by two men. https://t.co/P6SCcAGUJk

— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) March 7, 2019

This Day In History, 2009: The Miracle On The Hudson

‘Brace for Impact’ — 10 Years Later

‘Miracle on the Hudson’: Pilot Sully Sullenberger and 155 others cheated death on the Hudson

Our Chat:  Air traffic controller Patrick Harten speaks with the Daily News.#MiracleOnTheHudsonhttps://t.co/ByqZdkaEId

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) January 15, 2019

I wrote about Captain Sullenberger in one of my first blog posts, 10 years ago. You can read it here. 

One Of My Favorite Songs

🎶Billboard Hot 100 (For Week Ending March 12, 1983) pic.twitter.com/AslJQJYw8G

— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) March 12, 2018

No, not Billie Jean, I was never a Michael Jackson fan. I'm talking about Back On The Chain Gang, by The Pretenders. 

This Day In History, 1977: Elvis Presley Dies At 42

Issue dated August 29, 1977: Marty Feldman (Who?)


In People magazine's 20th Anniversary commemorative issue, published in Spring, 1994, then-managing editor Dick Stolley says that this cover was his biggest mistake. Why? Elvis Presley had just died. In 1977, the whole "Dead Celebrity" hysteria thing hadn't started yet and poor Elvis only got one paragraph, in the magazine's "Star Tracks" section.

Thee years later John Lennon's death in 1980 was the magazine's first Dead Celebrity cover. At the time of the 20th anniversary issue in 1994, it was the magazine's best-selling issue ever.

Fame

Wednesday morning update: It looks like perhaps Peter isn't there for the right reasons either. TMZ dug up his yearbook photo:



Original post:
The Bachelor In Paradise story continues to evolve, but one tidbit caught my eye. Last Tuesday DeMario had 5,425 Instagram followers. Today? 17,100.

The Downside Of Fame

I've said many times that the main reason people go on all the various Bachelor shows is to get famous, and for many of them it works. Now 2015 Bachelor Chris Soules is experiencing the downside of that fame. He's been arrested for leaving the scene of a fatal accident and the story is being covered everywhere, from People.com and ETOnline to USA Today, Time, Variety and even the NY Times. People also dug up information about previous incidents, including "possession of alcohol while under age, speeding and driving under the influence." (Read it here.)

There's no way to know how this will all turn out, but my guess is that for today at least, ex-Bachelor Chris is wishing he was a lot less famous.

Luke Pell's Very Bad Day

Photo credit: ABC

As we've discussed before here at Writing The World, the main reason for going on The Bachelor or any of its sister shows is to get famous. Some participants hope to do well enough on their first appearance that they're chosen to star in the next season. Some are hoping to go on to more media fame, as Ali, Jillian, Melissa Rycroft and others have done. Some just want to attract enough followers to make money shilling ridiculous products (Sugar Bear Hair???) on Instagram.

For Luke Pell, who made it to the Hometown dates episode on JoJo's season and was in the running to be the next Bachelor, it almost worked. He thought he had the Bach gig, having signed a contract, packed his bags and even checked in for his flight to Los Angeles to being filming, only to be bumped at the last minute for Nick. He did get famous, however, at least in the ecosystem known as Bachelor Nation, with 523,000 Instagram followers and the beginning of a career as a Country singer.

Then, starting Wednesday, it all came crashing down, and Luke is now experiencing the downside of fame. It has to do with women he either did or did not date, starting last summer when he thought he would be the Bachelor and continuing into this year. Reality Steve, who has never been a Luke fan, gleefully lays out the details in a blog post from Wednesday (read it here) and a podcast posted yesterday (listen here.) If you go to Google News and type in Luke's name, this is (some of) what you'll see:

At Cosmopolitan: Former "Bachelorette" Good Guy Luke Pell Reportedly Planned Out...
At Screener: A Bachelor Nation in mourning, as fan-favorite Luke Pell turn out to...
At Bustle: "Bachelorette" Star Luke Pell Rejects Cheating & Ghosting Claims...
At The Stir: Luke Pell Would've Been a Seriously Shady "Bachelor" -- Here's Why
At Blasting News: Reality Steve calls out "Bachelorette" alum Luke Pell
At OK Magazine:  "Bachelor" Reject Luke Pell Is Secretly A Major Player & It's Seriously...

Confession: I'm feeling some sympathy for Luke this morning. It looks like he did treat these women badly and that's indefensible, but he's clearly in over his head now as he tries to clean up the mess. He initially responded to Reality Steve with a snarky tweet that appeared to play the Veteran card, but the backlash, from Bach fan Possessionista and others, was sharply negative and he eventually deleted the tweet.



He also did a segment for Entertainment Tonight, with guest host and former Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky, which didn't go as well as it could have:



Granted Luke isn't on the level of a presidential candidate caught in a sex scandal, or even a big movie star going through a nasty divorce, but he is trying to build a career in the public eye as a singer and even a mini-scandal like this can hurt. In particular, men behaving badly towards women is a hot button issue right now, not one a male singer wants to be on the wrong side of. Seriously Luke, get a good PR/Crisis Management guru to help you navigate this. And one more thing: Give up the dream of being the Bachelor. Don't go on Paradise, don't hang out with (or date) other alums, don't get into Twitter spats with Reality Steve. It's over. Let it go. Move on.

Lamar Odom

One more update on Friday night: It turns out I was right with my update below. One of the entertainment shows had a segment tonight with a reporter interviewing a woman who's the manager of the Love Ranch. She said Odom insisted that all the women he came in contact with sign confidentiality agreements. Wow. I think it's safe to say he'll be seriously mortified when he realizes how "not confidential" his activities at the Love Ranch have become. It's not just the cocaine, the fake Viagra and the prostitutes. We now know he selected his two companions out of a lineup, which apparently is how they do it at brothels. We know that he had been texting with a working girl named Madison Montag, who is the brothel's token transgender prostitute, although in the end he selected two other "girls." We've seen the surveillance video from the first day and the credit card receipt showing a charge of $75,000. This really is a sad and disturbing story on so many levels. Based on what I've read Odom is still a very sick man and a full recovery is by no means guaranteed. It will be wonderful if he does recover, but at that point he'll be in for a very different kind of hurt.

Friday afternoon update: There are unofficial reports that Odom is improving slightly - he may have opened his eyes and some sites are even saying he "communicated verbally," i.e., spoke. Maybe. I had an admittedly strange thought about what could happen if he does fully recover. Given Odom's struggles with the harsh and unforgiving spotlight of fame, I'm guessing he won't be pleased to learn that the whole world knows he went to a brothel, did cocaine, took a sexual enhancement supplement and spent the week-end screwing his brains out with not one but two prostitutes, at a reported cost of $75,000.  

Friday morning update: I now know what Kanye West is up to, or at least what Kardashian employer E! wants us to think he's up to: he's home watching the kids (his daughter North and Kourtney's three kids.) That's a little hard for me to picture but, you know, whatever. Read about it here.

And one more thing about Kanye and Kim: back in August, 2013, a few weeks after Miss North West was born, I wrote that I gave Kimye two years as a couple, tops. (Read it here.) That would have taken them to August of this year, by which time I was pretty sure that they would have fallen out of love, or lust, or whatever it is that they're in, and gone their separate ways. August has come and gone, of course, and I humbly admit I was wrong. Apparently Kimye is still going strong. I still can't see them celebrating their 10th anniversary, and possibly not even their 5th, but for better or worse, they're still together now, and that's something.

Original post:


The big news in pop culture this week, of course, is the sad situation with Lamar Odom. As I'm writing on Thursday afternoon, things don't look good for Odom, although there have been no official announcements about his condition, one way or the other, from the hospital or the Kardashians. Jesse Jackson visited the hospital yesterday then announced that Odom was "improving," although he walked that back slightly later in the day. Today, apparently TMZ is reporting that Odom shows no signs of improvement and doctors are telling family members to expect the worst, even as there are reports that he may have squeezed Khloé's hand, or maybe it was Kim's hand. As an example of the feeding frenzy around this story, the Hollywood Life website posted contradictory stories an hour and seven minutes apart:

12.45 p.m. Lamar Odom Opens Eyes And Squeezes Kim Kardashian's Hand In Hospital -- Report
1.52 p.m. Lamar Odom: Kardashian's Hopes Fading As Doctors Say His Condition Worsens

My thoughts:

Where's Kanye? Kim flew to Las Vegas with Khloé Tuesday night. It's being reported that she canceled a baby shower scheduled for this week-end, and will be returning to LA for a doctor's appointment on Friday. Who's missing from all this? Her husband. I've been following this story pretty closely all around the internet and not one, not a single one of the many, many stories I've read has said anything about Kanye West. It's as if he doesn't exist.

Asking For Privacy. It's now standard practice for any celebrity experiencing almost any kind of life event to request "privacy at this difficult time," and apparently the Kardashians have requested the same. I don't mean to be disrespectful but there's more than a little irony there. The Kardashians are requesting privacy? Really? Isn't their entire empire built on letting it all hang out on camera? I promise I'm not being snarky when I say that that ship has sailed. The media abhors a vacuum and it's now been almost 48 hours since the story broke. In the absence of any comments from the K's or Odom's doctors, pretty much everyone else is rushing to talk, with or without any actual, factual information. There's just no way to stop it.

As Famous As I Wanna Be: I've written before about the perils of fame in America and one of the undercurrents of the Odom story is that hitching his star to the Kardashian fame machine is at least part of what led him to this point. True? Maybe, partly. His ex-girlfriend, mother to his three children (one of whom died of SIDS,) has said they were together for 10 years, and got engaged, but he always refused to get married. Then, shortly after they broke up, he married Khloé a month after meeting her. Was the opportunity to get famous on her television show at least part of the appeal? In August, 2013, when Odom's substance abuse and DUI first came to light, Allison Samuels wrote about Odom at The Daily Beast, indicating that he longed for Kardashian-level fame:

“He wanted all the fame and fortune the Kardashian family could give him, but never considered the price he’d pay for it.’’

That price, says the friend, has come in the form of constant cameras and media attention pointed his way. The media’s never-ending obsession with the Kardashian clan quickly began to cause the NBA player tremendous emotional distress, according to those who know him well.

“Lamar was a second-level sports star, particularly on a team like the Lakers with Kobe Bryant,’’ said one former Lakers player. “Not sure he understood that, but he wasn’t in Us and People magazine every week. There was a limit in interest in him off the court. But the Kardashians have an all-consuming fame that Lamar was not prepared for at all. It really is that old saying of ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ He wished for fame, but this hadn’t been on his own terms.’’

… “Not sure why the Lakers agreed to let him do that show at all,’’ says a teammate. “It was a big distraction for him and the team. But he wanted that celebrity so bad that Phil Jackson and others just didn’t want to deny him.


In a story written last night, Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo Sports talks about the costs of that fame:

In recent days too, the Kardashians refused to stop exploiting Odom on that reality show, turning what appeared to be a lost soul in crisis reaching out to his ex-wife only to have his phone calls manufactured into Khloe-Kim argument fodder for one more dreadful episode.

Sex, drugs, a disconsolate Khloe, and Kobe leaving the Lakers locker room at the MGM Grand Arena to get to the hospital. Poor Lamar Odom, unwittingly delivering them a trailer.

So, Khloe ended up at his bedside in Vegas, with her mother, Kris Jenner, dramatically pacing outside Sunrise Hospital in Vegas. The Rev. Jesse Jackson emerged onto the scene to make public proclamations. All the way until now, Odom played the part of a prop, a recurring character in the Kardashian cesspool.

Truth be told, the Kardashians transformed Odom’s frailties and flaws into a societal fascination. Around the Lakers, they would always tell you that the scrutiny of the show played a part in his undoing, that it made a largely shy and private guy far more exposed and vulnerable than he ever imagined. Privately, Odom would tell friends that he never imagined the impact that an entanglement with the Kardashians’ glare would have on his existence.

“You can get tickets for the Oscars, some good perks,” he once told a friend, “but I had no idea what the rest of it would be like.”

How will the story end?  There's no way to know right now. It's just sad.