Taylor Swift released a new song off her upcoming album, Lover, on Tuesday, July 23. Titled “The Archer,” the track is a departure from the first two singles she’s put out from Lover, “ME!” and “You Need to Calm Down.” The song is subdued and synthy, and packed with some pretty gut-wrenching lyrics.
Interestingly, “The Archer” is track number five off Lover, which is significant if you know anything about Taylor Swift‘s music. The pop icon has historically made the fifth song off her albums emotional, vulnerable, and deeply personal. (Please see: “Delicate,” “Dear John,” and, of course, “All Too Well.”) This was unintentional at first, but Swift has since caught on and now makes deliberate choices for her fifth tracks.
“So track five is kind of a tradition that really started with you guys because I didn’t realize I was doing this,” Swift said Tuesday on an Instagram live-stream. “But instinctually I was putting a very vulnerable, honest, emotional song as track five. So because you noticed this, I started to put the songs that were honest, emotional, vulnerable, and personal as track five.”
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“The Archer” is all of those things. “I’ve been the archer, I’ve been the prey/Who could ever leave me, darling/But who could stay,” she sings in the chorus, which some fans are reading as a nod to her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. They say he is the one who has stayed with her.
“Imagine Taylor sitting on her couch with Joe and she says, like, ‘I want to show you something,’ and she catches her guitar and sings ‘The Archer’ to him,” one fan wrote.
Some people think “The Archer” is a continuation of the “Delicate” music video, in which Swift becomes invisible but then is seen by a mysterious guy at a bar (presumably Joe).
Let me take you back to a Bachelor moment from earlier this year: Colton Underwood was on his first one-on-one date with contestant Hannah Brown, and things couldn’t have been more awkward. Brown held back the entire time—as if she was scared she’d say or do something to annoy Underwood. When he asked her to make a simple champagne toast, she went radio silent.
The scene was uncomfortable to watch, so naturally it was the first thing I thought about when news broke that Brown would be the next Bachelorette. I dreaded the idea of that date with Underwood being replicated 29 times. Not only would it make for bad television, it’d just be unfair to Brown. I remember distinctly thinking maybe she wasn’t ready for the attention and pressure that comes with being the Bachelorette.
But I was wrong. Like, so wrong. In fact, I’ve never been more wrong. Not only was Hannah Brown more than ready, she’s quickly become one of my favorite Bachelorettes of all time. The Alabama beauty queen has made a complete 360 turn compared to how she behaved on Underwood’s season: She’s unabashedly herself, funny, outgoing, and—most important—takes absolutely no bullshit from the guys. We witnessed this not even an hour into the premiere, when she sent home a contestant, Scott, because he lied about having a girlfriend. That set the tone for the entire season, and it’s been glorious.
We don’t have much time left with Brown on The Bachelorette—there’s just the “Men Tell All” and finale—and I’m sad this season is ending. To commemorate it, though, let’s go through all the times Hannah made the Internet cheer.
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What happened: Hannah’s friend Demi exposed Scott for secretly having a girlfriend while appearing on the show.
Hannah’s key quote: “Hey, Scott! We need to talk!”
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What happened: Hannah suspected Cam was telling a sob story to keep himself from getting sent home.
It appears even Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is a member of the Bey Hive. On Sunday, Markle, alongside her husband Prince Harry, attended the London premiere of The Lion King. And it was there that the British royals met their equally regal American counterparts: Beyoncé and Jay Z.
Rebecca English, a royal reporter for The Daily Mail, happened to get a front-row seat to the two couples meeting and exchanging pleasantries after appearing on the red carpet. And, as English humorously pointed out, it appeared as though there was more security for Beyoncé than there was for the royal pair.
“There’s honestly more security around Beyoncé and Jay-Z than there is around the royals,” she wrote in a tweet showing off the first images of Beyoncé, who stars as Nala in The Lion King, as she steps foot on the carpet.
Then, in her next tweet, English wrote, “I’ve got a feeling this is what you might have been waiting to see,” along with a video of the couples shaking hands and hugging.
The meeting, The Daily Mail pointed out, came just a few months after Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid tribute to Markle by posing for a photo in front of a portrait of the duchess during their BRIT Awards acceptance speech.
Although the duchess is still technically on maternity leave, she reportedly attended in a show of support for one of the royal charitable foundations. The Daily Mail reported that with the release of The Lion King, Disney also announced the launch of a new campaign called Protect the Pride, aimed at raising awareness for the dwindling lion population. That campaign will also be supported by the Royal Foundation.
Disney’s continuing with their live-action remakes of favorite animated classics—most recently Aladdin, currently in theaters, as well as The Lion King, starring Beyoncé and Donald Glover and set to come out July 19. Also on the slate? A revival of The Little Mermaid, which will likely have a similarly star-studded cast. Of course, people are watching closely to find out who’s going to be playing their favorite characters from the original 1989 film, and one reported potential casting is spurring some conversation on Twitter. According to Variety on Friday, Melissa McCarthy is in “early talks” to play the very memorable Ursula, and while a lot of people are thrilled—she’s hilarious, after all!—others on Twitter have some thoughts about it.
Some bring up the point that in the original Disney film, Ursula was inspired by the late drag queen Divine—so for Disney to skip picking an LGBTQ+ actor or drag queen for the role is to miss an opportunity for greater representation, especially with the news coming at the end of Pride Month. (Although inspired by Divine, Ursula was originally voiced in the 1989 movie by Pat Carroll, a cisgender white woman.) Top names on Twitter for the casting include Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Tituss Burgess, Danielle Brooks, TS Madison, and pop singer Lizzo, who has been a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race and is a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
Lizzo actually posted an audition video for the film last year to Twitter.
She reacted to the news of McCarthy’s reported casting with the pleading face emoji:
A lot of people would also really, really like Ginger Minj, a runner-up on season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race, to play Ursula.
She had her thoughts about the news, too:
Another Twitter favorite for the role is Tituss Burguss:
Like Lizzo, he basically already has an audition tape:
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We’re still waiting to hear about the rest of the casting, but last October, Zendaya responded to rumors that she’d been offered the role of Ariel. “It’s just the rumor, so we will see,” she told People at the time, adding that The Little Mermaid had been one of her favorite movies as a little kid.
As far as what we know about the rest of the movie, a few details have been finalized: Per Variety, Mary Poppins Returns director Rob Marshall is leading the project, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is working on some new songs for the movie with the first movie’s original songwriter, Alan Menken. (Don’t worry, the classic songs will still be in there too.)
Of course, nothing about casting Ursula is set in stone yet. According to Variety, no final decisions have been made, and no contracts have been signed—so we’ll have to wait and see.
“Everybody stay calm! Everybody stay calm!” or “NO! GOD! PLEASE NO!” or “I don’t hate it. I just don’t like it at all and it’s terrible.”
We imagine that’s what Steve Carell‘s Michael Scott would say upon learning that The Office is leaving Netflix for NBC Universal’s as-yet-unreleased streaming platform. The good news is that Netflix confirmed none of this is happening until 2021, so you still have plenty of time to binge watch all the antics at Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton branch.
The show, which aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013, has found a second, wildly popular life on Netflix. (However, Netflix doesn’t release its viewing numbers.) “I believe it’s the No. 1 most-popular acquired show on Netflix… there are millions of streams of those episodes,” NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt told New York magazine in September. “I believe that Netflix has helped make The Office extraordinarily popular, and more popular than it was when it was on the network. And they pay us a lot of money for it. If we knew how popular it was going to be before they made the deal, we would have asked for more money from them!”
“The Office is one of our most prized series, and we are thrilled it has found an exciting new home where generation after generation will continue to discover and rediscover Michael Scott’s most cringe-worthy moments, Jim and Pam’s will-they-or-won’t-they, and the incredible quirky ensemble that makes each episode a masterclass in comedy,” said Pearlena Igbokwe, President, Universal Television, said in a statement. NBCUniversal’s ad-supported steaming service is set to launch sometime in 2020.
Given the popularity of the show that helped launch the careers of people like Mindy Kaling, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, and BJ Novak, people are freaking out about the news on social media. While it’s a bummer, we do applaud the excellent use of GIF reactions. Some social media users also offered alternate viewing methods for the show.
We’ll get though this together, everybody. Perhaps a fashion show at lunch might help ease the pain?
The room is full of suits and ties waiting at attention. The Aunts surround the left wall. The floor in the back is covered in boots ready to march. But all you see is red. There, in the center, 250 Handmaids’ gowns hang limp, lifeless in a row; rustling only when the breeze of someone rushing over to the Marthas whisks by. There’s only one exit, and between you and it lies Melania Trump.
With how much The Handmaid’s Tale—Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel—blurs with the political landscape of 2019, this scene doesn’t sound like it’d be out of place in the show’s third season, which premieres today, June 5. The wives of Gilead in many ways resemble what Melania and Ivanka Trump have come to represent: women who uphold a ruthless patriarchal society, yet are oppressed by it at the same time. (In other words, the 52 percent.)
But in reality, I’m standing in the middle of the show’s gigantic storage closet at its set in Toronto. It’s mid-April, and the costume department just got through one of its heaviest design sprints: hundreds of Handmaids’ dresses, 54 Wives’ gowns, and a handful of sharply tailored teal blue looks for Serena Joy Waterford, the Commander’s formidable wife. And still, the designers have work to do. Today, they’re sewing outfits for the Jezebels. Then it’s back to focusing on Serena’s closet. (As for Melania, we’ll get to her soon.)
“Serena is my favorite to design for,” Natalie Bronfman, the show’s lead costume designer, says as she points to a wall in her office covered in sketches of blue gowns. “I take a lot of elements from the late fifties and early sixties as inspiration. The real clean, shaped stuff. Then I mix them in teal.”
It’s not just the box-pleats or angular necklines that makes designing for Serena a costumer’s dream. It’s her complexities—like tormenting a postpartum June for running away and giving birth in an abandoned country home; then turning around to set June and baby Nicole free from her womanizing husband and Gilead’s archaic rules.
“Costume says so much,” Bronfman says. “It tells where you’re from, what your economic status is, what your mental status is. That’s all there in how and what you wear. People tend to write it off as ‘just clothes’—but it’s not, actually.”
Serena’s pivotal moment in the season two finale, where she gives away baby Nicole.
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Season two had plenty moments that made you think maybe Serena isn’t the monster we thought she was, only to turn right around and confirm that, yeah, she really is the worst. (Well, maybe next to Aunt Lydia.) Season 3 delivers even more of that “Will she? Won’t she?” pit-in-your-stomach anxiety—and, without giving away any spoilers, her mental state is often reflected in her clothes.
But wait, let’s back up: You’re probably curious about what the hell Melania was doing in the costume department? I was too. In fact, I was shocked when I saw images of the Trump family hanging up in a few different places around the room. (Unfortunately I can’t share pictures of these mood boards, due to spoilers.)
“Oh, that?” Bronfman laughs when I point out the photo of Melania hanging on the exit door. It’s that now almost too apt meme of the First Lady walking down a hall of the White House’s dystopian red Christmas trees. On top of each one sits a crisp white, photoshopped bonnet.
“That was right at Christmas and somebody sent it to us, so we put it up because we were in the midst of building all of these Handmaids’ dresses,” she says, gesturing to the 250 capes in front of us.
