Category: Entertainment

Jessie James Decker is ready to get back into the game.

Her new record deal signed in January, “I’m back in the studio working on an album right now,” she told E! News at November’s CMAs, promising her most vulnerable music to date. “There will always be that side of me that will always have that fun, quirky side. But I will say that this is probably the most elevated my music’s ever been, the most mature,” she explained to HuffPost at their January Build Series. “I’ve been making music and recording records since I was a teenager. I’ll be 32 soon, and this is going to be a very mature womanly side.”

Building off a three-season stint on her E! reality show, Eric & Jessie: Game On, she also has plans for a TV show “in the food space”, plus her October standalone cookbook, Just Feed Me, and more ventures with her fashion line Kittenish, the production of which now serves as husband Eric Decker‘s 9-to-5 since his 2018 retirement from the NFL. 

So as she celebrates her 32nd birthday today, her slate is full. But she’d wipe it clean tomorrow if it interfered with raising their kids Vivianne Rose, 6, Eric Thomas II, 4, and Forrest Bradley, 2. “Honestly, being a mother is the best thing I could have ever done with my life. Truthfully,” she told HuffPost. “All of this could go away, and all that matters is that I want my kids to be happy.” 

After all, they’re half the reason for her rock-solid six-year marriage. The country pop singer-songwriter and the former wide receiver, 33, were prepared for their relationship to take a hit when they became parents just nine months after tying the knot in 2013 at Colorado’s Castle Cliff Estate, near where he was stationed with the Denver Broncos. 

“We talk about how sometimes the marriages don’t work out once the kids are born because they’re so tired,” she told E! News in October 2015, just a month after welcoming little Eric, “but we’re so madly in love and we just have an incredible foundation.” 

Rather than leaving the Nashville-based couple scrambling for pockets of romance, having children made their union “even stronger and made us even closer because you know—think about it. We created these people out of love together,”she explained during a chat on The Motherly Podcast last August. “We are so madly in love with these people that we created together and we have the same goal which is to love them and take care of them and give them the best life we possibly can, which makes us closer and stronger,” 

Of course, she continued, “We already liked each other a ton before they came along.”

It’s a small, but crucial detail, Jessie’s previous romantic history being heavier on quantity than quality. 

Following a bad romance with a man she labeled only as Angelo in her 2018 book, Just Jessie: My Guide to Love, Life, Family, and Food, a pseudonym chosen to protect the guilty, “I dated many, many guys. Like snowflakes, no two were alike,” she wrote. “There was the bartender, who was really easygoing and sweet. It was a nice change of pace from my previous experience, where nothing I did seemed right.” 

While none of her suitors were arguably as awful as Angelo, a Nashville music producer she said seemed to revel in keeping her down just as her music career was truly taking off, they simply weren’t quite it. The “very financially solvent” ex-footballer, the “too vanilla” pro baseball player, even the sweet bartender didn’t have the right mix to be her perfect mate.

And turned off by the whole process, the then-22-year-old declared she was done partaking. 

Two years after making a splash with her self-titled debut, the Italian born military brat decided she was “swearing off men”, she wrote in her book. Which is precisely when the NFL rookie walked into her life. 

Well, technically her friend’s. “He was in Arizona training, and I got a text from my girlfriend who said, ‘I’m having dinner with this guy I’m seeing, and this other guy just showed up, and he’s stunning,'” Jessie recalled to Access Hollywood in 2013 of that winter evening in 2011. Initially resistant, it was hard to refuse when her pal sent a picture of the 6-foot-3 two-sport athlete, an outfielder drafted by both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Minnesota Twins, before being scooped up in the third round of the 2010 NFL draft. 

Soon she was texting over her own picture and giving her pal the okay to play matchmaker. “He asked my friend for my number and texted me right away,” she wrote. And staring at that missive, she made the decision to play this round with a new strategy.

“Starting from the very first text from Eric, I decided I would do things differently this time around,” she noted. “From now on, if a man wanted me, he was going to have to show it. So I made Eric chase me.”

Thankfully, the University of Minnesota alum is pretty good at playing catch, deftly wooing his future bride from a distance. 

“We just talked on the phone and video chatted for like five weeks and then he flew out to Nashville and spent the weekend with me,” she shared with Elite Daily in 2017. Then he made his move: “On the way to me taking him to the airport he asked me to be his girlfriend, literally like an 8th grader.”

Which, TBH was really the last time he’d done this whole courting thing, his only previous relationship being a seven-year romance with his high school sweetheart. “They were babies when they met, so Eric had no idea what it meant to date as an adult,” she shared in her book. “Basically, he was raised to go dutch.” His habit of splitting the bill on dates and never offering “to cover the bill or flights when I came in to visit him,” was irksome and left the singer worried he might be broke. (This, despite his $2.5 million four-year contract.) 

Eventually, she sat him down to see if he’d be open to a bit of constructive criticism. “He was just clueless,” she explained, a problem easily rectified when she told him to step it up. 

By the time they celebrated their first anniversary, he was stepping down—to one knee, that is—offering a round-cut diamond and a promise to be the perfect person she’d always been seeking. “He is my soul mate,” she gushed after his proposal in Las Vegas, where they were attending the ACM Awards. “We feel so fortunate to have found each other.”

Grateful enough, anyway, to happily accept their #goals mantle. Noting to The Knot that “I could’ve settled three times before him. I had three serious boyfriends before him,” she said she hopes they serve as an example of “to let people know that you could find happiness too. It is real. It does exist.” 

Among the takeaways in the Decker Guidebook to true love: Don’t get too caught up in milestone events (“Every single day is a celebration for us and I know it sounds cheesy but it really is,” she told E! News, explaining how they both managed to forget their second anniversary), keep it adorable (whether that means car ride sing-alongs or matching PJs) and always, always maintain the sort of flirty banter that got you there in the first place, easy to do when you have a man that’s “just shredded” as Jessie put it to E! News. 

“Not only is he the best father and husband in the whole world,” she wrote in a 2015 Man Crush Monday tribute, “but he is so damn fine I literally want to lick his face every time he walks into the room.”

Starting to understand why they have three kids?

Though Jessie declared ahead of Forrest’s March 2018 birth that “this is my last baby,” a situation that seemed fitting when he arrived on the anniversary of that very first phone call, they’ve both waffled a bit in recent months. 

“I feel so good about our three. Three is a great number and we’ve got our hands full,” she said on E!’s Pop of the Morning in January. “But you know, I also have this thought in my head sometimes that I don’t want to regret it two years down the road if I did want a little what do they call it a caboose baby.” 

Either way, their train is going to keep on chugging. 

Calling their romance “genuine”, she told Elite Daily, “We’re really happy and so I think I can feel good and go to sleep at night knowing that we’re inspiring others to maybe have a great relationship too.” 

Shailene Woodley is opening up about a health scare in her early 20s that got in the way of her career. 

In a recent interview with The New York Times, the Big Little Lies star told the publication, “I haven’t spoken much about this yet publicly, and I will one day, but I was very, very sick in my early 20s.” She revealed she was going through this while filming the Divergent series and at the same time “struggling with a deeply personal, very scary physical situation.”

Because of that, she added, “I said no to a lot of opportunities because I needed to get better, and those jobs ended up going peer of mine who I love. They went on to a lot of success, but there was a mix of people saying, ‘You shouldn’t have let that go!’ or ‘You shouldn’t have been sick!'” 

The actress added, “That was combined with my own internal process of, ‘Am I going to survive what I’m going through right now and ever be healthy, or even have the opportunity to work on projects I’m passionate about again because of the situation I’m in?’ I was in a place where I had no choice but to just surrender and let go of my career, and it brought out this negative voice in my mind that kept spinning for years and years afterward.”

On the topic of her 20s, Woodley also shared that while in her late teens she had a “strong idea of my identity and the meaning of my life,” that all felt upended when she went through an abusive relationship.

“That combined with, honestly, the commercial success I had in this industry began to wear on my strength. My 20s felt a little bit like being in a washing machine, where you’re being thrown all over the place,” she shared. “As a teenager and as a child, I always thought acting was a hobby, and I never wanted the idea of making it into a career to take away my passion for it.”

She added that in her 20s, “there was a huge chunk of time where fear and anxiety and competition were definitely at the forefront of my mind and my ego in a way they weren’t when I was younger.”

Most recently, Woodley has appeared in HBO’s Big Little Lies and Endings, Beginnings, which will debut on April 17 on digital and on demand May 1. 

There is no bond stronger than that of sisters.

This phrase couldn’t ring more true for Alexis Naylor and Jessica Dennert. The two siblings have similar stories and an unbreakable connection that’s unlike any other.

For one, the two were pregnant at the same time—Jessica gave birth a few days ago, while Alexis is due later this summer. Second, they are both welcoming baby girls into their respective families.

Sadly, the sisters have another thing in common: both of their husbands passed away last year.

In addition to their spouses dying, their father, grandfather, two brothers, uncle and cousin were tragically killed in a plane crash in November 2019.

After hearing the sisters’ story, Jenna Emery—who is also a widow and mother herself—organized a virtual baby shower for Alexis and Jessica.

Speaking to E! News, each woman shared details of how everything came together and why this unique celebration will always have a special place in their hearts.

“It all happened so fast,” Alexis recalls of the virtual baby shower being set up. “[Jenna] messaged us on Instagram and said, ‘Hey, I have a lot of people who have reached out to me and we just want to do something for you. We just want to take a little bit of the pressure that bringing a new baby brings, we just want to take that off of you.'”

“It was great to have that support because we hadn’t had it, but she said I’m not taking no for an answer. Because at first we were like no, that’s too much, we can’t accept that,” Alexis continued. “We were like, ‘Who would donate to complete strangers?’ It just didn’t seem possible, but [Jenna] put together a registry, and the next day she shared it.”

After three days of it being online, Alexis said they had “over 600 things bought for us combined.”

The sisters explained feeling “completely blown away” after receiving so many gifts and having an overwhelming amount of support from strangers. Jessica said stuff from their registry kept going off “really fast,” so they had to keep adding more items.

Their kids have also been enjoying their donations and the virtual baby shower.

“Our kids have loved getting the packages, and they’ve enjoyed it almost as much as we have,” Alexis expressed. “They’re like, ‘This is for my baby sister!’ It’s been a fun family thing as well for us.”

Because of this amazing experience, the sisters plan on telling their kids, “especially the new babies that don’t get to know their dads” about how their virtual baby shower came to be.

“To know that complete strangers were willing to buy them socks, and soap, car seats, strollers… because they just felt this hole,” Jessica shared. “And we can’t help but wonder if our husbands on the other side had something to do with this, that this was a way that they could touch people’s hearts to help support us since they couldn’t be here.”

For Jenna, helping the sisters out was a no-brainer. In fact, she said there was something inside her that just needed to help them out.

“It just hit me so hard, like I couldn’t deny it. I was like, you need to help these girls out,” Jenna remembered thinking, which is how the online registry and virtual baby shower idea came to life.

“I was just thinking if I was pregnant during the time I lost a husband, what would help me the most? And that’s kind of what hit me,” she explained. “That’s the number one thing that could help them or that would be getting them prepared for a baby. ‘Cause when you’re in the grief process, the last thing you want to do is function.”

For Jenna, this kind of thing is what brings people together.

“I think we have a bond now where we will always be in each other’s lives,” she said. “I think we will keep in touch, probably forever.”

Lily Allen just wants to see David Harbour smile. 

The Stranger Things actor celebrated his 45th birthday on Friday, April 10 and it looks like he spent it with the best company. 

Harbour took to Instagram to share a collage of pics from his special day, in which girlfriend Allen is pictured with her daughters along with many birthday decorations and balloons for the birthday boy.

He captioned the post, “To all my friends and fans that reached out with birthday wishes yesterday, thank you, so happy to have so so so so many people out there tracking my race to being infirm and embarrassingly saggy all over,” he wrote. “And to those that didn’t, you’re heartless jerks.” 

He added, “Very happy the supply lines still manage to ship dinosaur toothpicks. A birthday isn’t the same without an extinct species menagerie atop lush radioactive fluorescent green icing.”  

At 45, Harbour is still a kid at heart. 

“I feel like a quarantined kid again, on the verge of a 10,000 year ice age,” Harbour added jokingly. “Hey triceratops! Looking trim!” 

He ended his post by gushing over his girlfriend’s baking skills, “Yo @paul.hollywood, call @lilyallen for baking tips.”

The English singer and songwriter took to her own Instagram page to share the delicious looking three-layer cake she baked for Harbour and wrote, “HBD @dkharbour.”

As fans may recall, Harbour and Allen first made their red carpet debut at the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards this past January after dating for months. 

Most recently, the couple began sparking marriage rumors after a fan asked both Harbour and Allen during an Instagram Live how many copies of the singer’s latest album had sold. Her answer had fans wondering if the two were more than just a “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.”

“[5,000]. I’m serious. That’s how bad things are these days. You think you married a pop star? You didn’t,” Allen said. “Not that we’re married. We’re not married. I just want to make sure you know.”

But then, the Hellboy actor interjected and told followers, “But she is my wife.” Allen responded, “Yes we do pretend.” 

Two is better than one!

Believe it or not, Khloe Kardashian‘s daughter is turning two years old on Easter Sunday… which is only a day away.

And it’s safe to say the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star is getting a little emotional over True Thompson‘s upcoming second birthday.

“My TuTu will be two tomorrow,” the Good American founder wrote on Instagram Stories. “I’m freaking out just a little.”

She later asked her daughter, “Whose birthday is it tomorrow?” True replied, “TuTu’s!”

So how is Khloe’s baby girl celebrating her last day as a one-year-old?

Well, for starters: True is looking fabulous as ever on Saturday afternoon. The little one looked like a princess, as she dressed in a blush-colored tulle dress and held up a wand.

But when she was done spreading some magic, she went inside her playhouse and cooked a few (pretend) meals for her momma.

“Wow, pasta you made me?” Khloe asked True when she gave her a pot of noodles. Later, her little nugget treated her to some cupcakes. “Is that for me,” the reality TV star said, to which True replied, “Yes!”

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this Kardashian-Jenner birthday party will hit a little differently this year.

The little one will celebrate her second birthday with her mom and dad, Tristan Thompson.

“Khloe is going to have a special birthday party at home for True with Tristan,” a source recently shared with E! News. “She’ll make the day extra special for True, even though it will be just them.”

“Khloe is going to go out of her way to make it a fun day for True with egg-dyeing and sweets,” the insider added. “She and Tristan are getting along well and it’s been nice to have him around more than they expected.”

According to the source, the famous family also plans to spends to celebrate True’s birthday and Easter Sunday over Zoom. Even cuter? The family will sing “Happy Birthday” to True via video, the insider shared.

This birthday will definitely be one to remember!