The last time Thomas Markle majorly made headlines was around the royal wedding. If you remember, he was expected to attend his daughter Meghan Markle‘s nuptials to Prince Harry, but medical issues ultimately kept him away. The most perplexing part of the situation, though, was his chattiness with the press. Every time there was an update about his royal wedding attendance, Thomas gave a statement to TMZ. He’s kept up this media transparency too, talking to outlets seemingly every chance he gets. Samantha Markle, Meghan’s half-sister, is notorious for doing this as well.
Thomas’ latest media tour is generating just as much buzz as his royal wedding quotes. In a new interview with Good Morning Britain, Thomas says he’s been trying to text Meghan for weeks but hasn’t received a response. He says he’s been “ghosted” by everyone connected to Meghan and wants Queen Elizabeth II, of all people, to help mend this rift.
PHOTO: Getty Images
But the queen reportedly has her own opinions about this situation. A new feature from Vanity Fair posits she isn’t too keen on Meghan’s strategy of ignoring the drama with her father.
“[The Queen] was very concerned that it [the Thomas Markle situation] was spiraling out of control, which it was,” one observer tells VF. “Buckingham Palace wanted to be able to do something and be proactive and make the situation go away. It was a direction from the Queen, so her courtiers were under strict instructions to sort it out. But Kensington Palace was not singing from the same hymn sheet, and that was because the message was coming from Meghan. She didn’t want to engage and thought that she could handle it on her own.”
Meghan’s silence on the matter has reportedly ruffled some feathers in the palace. “There was a lot of tension between courtiers within the two royal households, and I think it just got to a point where it was stalemate and, you know, neither could move,” the source added.
From the surface, it appears Meghan’s silence method is prevailing. No one in the royal household has directly commented on the Thomas Markle drama—yet. Of course, we’ll let you know if that changes.
Ariana Grande’s music video is full of iconic references, including nods to some of the best rom-coms of the early aughts—but it also paid written homage to her exes, Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez and Pete Davidson, who each got a page in Ariana’s Mean Girls-inspired Burn Book. But there was something that, at first, seemed quite small—until you picked up on it: Namely, um, where was Mac Miller’s page?
Miller died of an overdose in September, several weeks before Grande and Davidson broke up. Miller and Grande had split up in May after almost two years of dating, so the news understandably hit her hard. Grande still seems to be working through his death and rather than give him a page in her Burn Book, she paid tribute to their relationship in a different way—and we’ve all just caught it now.
As Elle noted on Friday, a fan tweeted on Thanksgiving, expressing her excitement for the upcoming video: “when she flips through the thank u next burn book and pics of her with sean, ricky, pete & mac arrive……………. we had to fucking stan”
Grande’s response revealed that he wasn’t in the book—he was somewhere else in the video: “M ain’t in the book he next to my bed.”
Grande sings Miller’s verse, looking up—”Wish I could say thank you to Malcolm, ’cause he was an angel”—and then closes the book, right around the one-minute mark in the video. Behind her on the nightstand are several framed photos are. It seems likely that he’s in one of the photos, though you can’t quite see it.
At Glamour’s 2018 Women of the Year Summit, Yvonne Orji opened up about how her faith led her to a starring role on HBO’s Insecure. Her story, below.
I’m Yvonne Orji. So some of you may know me as Issa Rae’s very messy best friend Molly on HBO’s Insecure. Thanks for watching! But what you may not know is that the journey to get there was entirely faith-led. Like, y’all, I could not have this life or anything. Nothing about the six-year-old girl who emigrated from Nigeria to America who was destined to be a doctor…if you know anything about Nigerians, you’re a doctor, lawyer or engineer. My mom is still praying, “Just one day. Maybe just one day…” It’s like, no. But nothing about my story pointed anywhere to comedy.
And that is where God comes in. Y’all that was all His idea.
I was raised as a Catholic, so God was always kind of a part of my life in a way. But as a freshman in college, I attended a Bible study that completely changed my life. That’s where I became a born-again Christian. Now, I know some of you are like, “In college?” Yes, because nothing about freshman year says Scripture, OK? Because I had a plan, so I was like, where are the boys? But I attended a bible study, and the minister there kept referring to God as, “Daddy.” I’ve never heard anybody refer to Him so intimately, and I’m really competitive—I have three older brothers—so for no reason I was like, “I want what she has.”
One night, when I was trying to figure out what was next and needed some clarity, I heard Him say, “Do comedy.”
I wanted that level of intimacy, so I said yes to the invitation—and from that, I too developed a very intimate relationship where I hear God. And one night, when I was trying to figure out what was next and needed some clarity, I heard Him say, “Do comedy.”
I’m sorry, what?
Because I wasn’t funny. I was like, nobody laughs at me. They used to laugh at me. Nobody was like, “That Yvonne is SUPER funny.” But at that point, I was on my way to becoming a doctor. I was stalling because I got my masters in public health. This is what you do when you’re the child of immigrants—you go to school to avoid going to school. And then after I got my masters, I was still not ready to be a doctor. I wanted to go to Liberia, which was just finishing a war, because it was easier for me to go to a war-torn country than tell my parents that I wasn’t going to be a doctor.
So I was wrestling. I was wrestling with God’s words. I was like, “What do you mean you want me to do comedy?” Here’s the thing, how many people have challenged God and won? You know, you can’t wrestle with Him. I’m not a fighter, look at me. So clearly I took His advice and I did comedy.
Sounds daring and fun, but pretty soon after I moved to New York I found myself with zero dollars and zero leads. Let me tell you right now: That’s not sexy. OK? Because Sallie Mae wants her money, like all of it. So one day I found myself incredibly hungry. I was in Harlem, and if you live in New York you know about 2 Bros. Pizza. It feeds the artist and the homeless, guys. It was $1 a slice of pizza, and if you’re really fancy you can get two slices and a soda for $2.75. I see some people shaking their heads. 2 Bros. Pizza is where it’s at! But here’s the kicker: I’m living in Queens at the time, and I didn’t have the $4.40 to take the subway to get there and back. Here I was, 25 years old, with two degrees, and not even the $7 to get a slice of pizza.
I was like, was this really the life I risked it all for? I have a family that loves me and cares about me, and I am broke. I am poor.
PHOTO: HBO
Orji on ‘Insecure’
But God must have sensed my doubt because, in that instant, I promise y’all I got a download from Heaven…I grabbed a pen and paper, and I wrote everything I heard as He dictated plans for my life. And in that moment, it was like, this is amazing…I took a nap, and when I woke up I was like, I’m just going to say yes.
What followed was a series of saying yes. Because if He has plans for me, then I should just go with it. So I said yes to the temp job I hated but allowed me to perform comedy at night. I said yes to taking over a stand-up show in New York City. I said yes to a residency in a college production in Richmond, Virginia, that gave me two days to get there. I said yes to being a writer in the writers room for a TV show in L.A. At the time I didn’t know what that was, but, guys, it’s pretty self-explanatory. That’s what Google is for.
Say yes. What’s the worst that could happen?
So there was a lot of hustle and there was a lot of setbacks. I’m not going to front. The road to comedy was not sexy. I make it look very sexy now, but it was hard. That show that I was writing on got canceled—but from that point forward, I just kept listening. … I put every idea I had into creating the trailer for a show called First Gen, a series about a Nigerian girl who drops out of Med School to become a comedian (sound familiar?). This was back in 2016, and the trailer for First Gen became my audition tape for Insecure. It’s what Issa was able to see and turn to the producers and say, “Give her a shot.” I didn’t have an agent, manager, anything, I had never acted. So this is HBO—Home Box Office—this is not like, a small production. And this thing that I hunkered down and accomplished was what Issa was able to be like, “Let’s try her out!”
So, I’m not a surgeon, I’m not. Don’t get sick around, I’ll probably just give you Advil. But I’m definitely fulfilling my purpose. Inside all of us exists some kind of compass—whether it’s divine or otherwise—but it’s something desperately trying to navigate you and all of us to the life we know we were destined to live. So I think the choice is pretty simple: Keep letting fear sidetrack you or take what you’ve been given, maybe even told from God above, and say yes. But whatever it is, keep going. Keep doing it. Why not? That’s what Glamour Women of the Year is all about—women who are not afraid to go after what they want.
Say yes. What’s the worst that could happen?
Find out more about Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year here.
After Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the 2016 Super Bowl, Twitter was flooded with people expressing their genuine shock at her voice. “Who knew [Lady Gaga] could sing like that? No hiding in [the] national anthem,” one user wrote. “I had no idea lady gaga [could] sing like that,” another praised.
One could argue that there’s not a large overlap of Lady Gaga fans and NFL viewers—and I’ll get to why that’s frustrating—but a similar situation also happened the year prior, at the Oscars. Gaga performed a Sound of Music medley dressed in a simple gown with her hair long and flowing. After, the reviews on Twitter were clear: She brought the house down with her powerful pipes. “Lady Gaga can actually sing. Who would’ve thought of that? #Oscars,” a new fan wrote.
But these comments are a bit perplexing, because Gaga has been singing “like this” for years. It just took her covering two American standards for the general public to notice.
Before this, Gaga was seen as a shock-and-awe pop provocateur whose skill took a backseat to spectacle. People didn’t pay attention her good voice at the 2009 VMAs because of the whole bleeding outfit thing. Her soulful rendition of “Poker Face” and “Speechless” at the 2010 Grammys was completely lost on them until Elton John showed up. Both instances clearly showcased Gaga’s abilities, but it wasn’t taken seriously by some until she took on the national anthem.
Now, she’s winning the masses over again with A Star Is Born. The Bradley Cooper-directed movie isn’t even out yet, but Gaga’s turn as a struggling singer named Ally has critics completely floored. One reviewer describes Gaga as a “nuclear bomb”, while another says she “positively soars.” An article from Noisey predicts A Star Is Born will cement Gaga’s position as an all-time Hollywood great. The problem with that assessment, though, is that Gaga’s already proven herself to be great time and time again. So why is the world just now noticing?
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The answer is a bit frustrating and, to be clear, has nothing to do with the music community’s perception of Gaga. To me, this is about people we all know: the strangers sitting next to you at a bar, the drivers in front of you in bumper-to-bumper traffic, the Twitter users stunned by Gaga’s singing. They’re the ones who don’t see the value in her work—or Britney Spears’ or Taylor Swift’s, for that matter. My theory: Female-focused entertainment is still viewed as frothy, whimsical, and lighthearted. It’s something to enjoy but not take seriously, like a slice of key lime pie.
This rings especially true for pop music. The genre is led by female artists, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s often dismissed as hollow and overproduced. Swift, for instance, had to combat accusations that she was selling out when she dropped her pop-oriented record 1989 four years ago. “What my fans in general were afraid of was that I would start making pop music and I would stop writing smart lyrics,” she told Barbara Walters in 2014, as if “smart” and “pop” are mutually exclusive.
Gaga herself even shut down a journalist in 2009 for suggesting her music deflected her talents. “If I was a guy and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music because I love fast cars and f—king girls, you’d call me a rock star,” she said. “But because I’m a female, [and] because I make pop music, you’re judgmental and you say it’s distracting.”
Evidence that female pop isn’t taken seriously also exists in A Star Is Born. Gaga’s character (Ally) has a meteoric rise to fame that eclipses in the latter half of the movie when, according to critics, she’s abandoned her singer-songwriter roots for glossy dance-pop. The implication here is that Ally is no longer an artist when she goes pop, but just a cog in the machine. “Can music movies chill with this whole ‘pop = soulless crap, singer-songwriter rock = real artistry’ nonsense? As if Lorde and Beyoncé don’t crush that false dichotomy on a bad day,” tweeted A.V Club critic A.A. Dowd after seeing A Star Is Born.
But this “false dichotomy” only applies to female artists, in my opinion. I’m having trouble recalling any male pop singer who’s had to defend the intelligence of their work like Gaga or Swift. Case in point: The late Michael Jackson was viewed as an artistic visionary with otherworldly dance skills and an impeccable ear for music. Compare him to Madonna, his female contemporary. She spent actual decades battling the idea she was a talentless manipulator who “reinvented” her image to stay current—despite the fact she’s also an amazing dancer with writing credits on all her records. “I felt [the word ‘reinvention’] trivialized what I did,” Madonna said in 2004. “People would say, ‘Oh she’s just reinvented herself. By the way, it’s not that easy because it requires investigation. It requires work.”
Simply put, female-focused entertainment straight-up isn’t respected in the same way male-focused entertainment is. It’s why “chick flicks” like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or Sex and the City are branded “guilty pleasures.” (Hell, it’s why the terms “chick flick” and “guilty pleasure” exist in general.) “A quote ‘girly’ movie is taken less seriously than an action movie where people are just shooting people left and right and there’s no deeper thematic message,” Sierra Burgess Is a Loser screenwriter Lindsey Beer said when Glamour talked to her in July about romantic comedies. “For some reason, less muscular fare is taken less seriously.”
Hollywood’s power structure is certainly one reason why this disparity exists. The industry is still majority led by men placing emphasis on male-driven music and movies, and that no doubt affects public perception. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is still mostly comprised of men, which means testosterone-laden films get the most Oscar buzz. Movies led by women, meanwhile, are labeled as “niche.” This is slowly but surely changing, but for decades we’ve been programmed to think masculinity is mainstream and femininity is fringe. It’s a baffling concept, seeing as how women make up more than half the population, but it’s prevailed nonetheless. Our society literally has no problem paying women unequally, so of course it doesn’t place the same value on works made by (or for) them.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lady Gaga singing the national anthem at the 2016 Super Bowl.
It’s only when Lady Gaga stepped into more masculine and traditional worlds that she was universally praised. In 2016, it was for her take on the national anthem, arguably the song for rough-and-tumble American ambition. And now it’s for A Star Is Born, a whiskey-soaked tale as old as time with an Oscar-nominated man steering the ship. The trend is clear: In many cases, female performers are only taken seriously when they play not with the boys, but like them. Anything too colorful or too flamboyant is perceived as lesser-than. For women, talent is often ignored if there’s too much tinsel. Gaga’s Oscar campaign is well-deserved, yes, but she shouldn’t have needed it for people to see her as a tour-de-force. She’s been one since 2008. We were just too distracted by her meat dresses to notice.
Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer for Glamour.
You like drama? Stories with strong female voices? Shade in spades? Then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings are the show for you—oh, also because they’ll directly, and significantly, affect your life. Unfortunately, this bit of must-see TV airs when most everyone’s working or watching their kids, so we’ll be here to recap each day of these monumentally important proceedings.
Here’s the good news about Brett Kavanaugh, who looks likely to be the country’s next Supreme Court justice: He is great on carpool duty! Also, probably an attentive listener at parent-teacher conferences! This much, we have been told.
All week, during his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh was painted as the nice guy. We heard about his commitment to hiring and mentoring women, his standing volunteer date at a local soup kitchen, and his passion for coaching girls’ basketball. All week, Republican senators, Kavanaugh’s colleagues, and the judge’s own unfailingly polite demeanor reminded us: This is a normal man. This is the dad next door.
The theme reached its saturation point today, when Rebecca Taibleson, a former clerk of Kavanaugh’s, pointed out that he’s a “regular at his local bar, where he’s partial to a Budweiser and a hamburger.”
I like beer and hamburgers and nice people. After watching over 30 hours of Kavanaugh-TV, I am thoroughly sold on the fact that he is a hoot at a neighborhood BBQ.
PHOTO: Drew Angerer
But here’s the bad news for anyone concerned about reproductive freedom, unchecked presidential power, or common sense gun reform: He refused to address his views on any of them. I heard his jump shot extolled this week, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s nothing compared to his duck. He dodged just about every opportunity to say something of substance.
Perhaps the most bizarre example of this: Kavanaugh repeatedly name-checked four landmark Supreme Court decisions, calling them “the four greatest moments in Supreme Court history.” But whenever someone asked him if these personal faves of his were “correctly decided,” he refused to say. Great, but not correct? Sounds like a MAGA hat went to law school.
Is there a protocol-related reason that might make Kavanaugh feel unable to confirm that something he just said is great is great? Maybe. But is it possible that this is all comical, tragic shadiness? I’m just a regular gal who likes Budweiser and beer, so what do I know?
And that’s not the only question I have. As a result of this weeklong shade brigade—brought to you by your own taxes, by the way—I still have several questions about Brett Kavanaugh, and you should too.
What was the point of all that relentless branding of Kavanaugh this week? Being nice to women and following precedent is to Kavanaugh as Calabasas is to Kim Kardashian—in other words, essential to his new brand. This was driven home hard all week. In the short term, this was likely meant to pacify whichever American women aren’t protesting his nomination yet. But it has a second, long-term purpose. If Kavanaugh gets on the Court, and casts ice-cold votes against women’s health interests, he’ll want us to remember that as a dude, he actually loves women. Awesome, cool. I’ll think of him fondly when I have to smuggle my birth control in from Toronto.
But wait—does he always follow precedent? If you ask him, abso-frickin’-lutely! (Frickin’ is for sure as crass as this guy gets.) But if you ask other knowledgeable parties: Not so much, especially when it comes to matters of same-sex marriage and abortion. When questioned on both topics, Kavanaugh repeatedly referenced specific decisions as the legal last word on the subjects—even though there were more recent cases expanding or clarifying the Court’s opinion on them. If that sounds complicated, you can read more about it here—but suffice to say that Kavanaugh has a curious habit of deferring to cases that happen to match his conservative beliefs, rather than the most current rulings. Convenient.
So, with that in mind—would he vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or not? Judiciary Committee members tried, to no avail, to get a straight answer from him all week. Ten million times, Kavanaugh referred to Roe as “settled law”—though, characteristically, he would not say whether he believed it was correctly decided—and for some time, that chorus of “precedent on precedent” seemed, on its face, reassuring. But while Kavanaugh’s poker face never broke down, his show of sureness on the matter did. First, a leaked email from his time working in the White House seemed to indicate that Kavanaugh doesn’t really think Roe is all that airtight. Then, in what felt like perhaps the loudest indication of his own personal views from the entire proceedings, Kavanaugh referred to various kinds of contraception as “abortion-inducing drugs.” And perhaps that’s no big deal! Happens to all of us, right? We wake up, panicked, and we text our best friends, “Oh shit! Forgot to take my abortion last night!” Could be an honest mistake. Who knows.
Okay, so—what could this guy have possibly told Senator Susan Collins (R—Maine), a key vote in his confirmation and a firm advocate of choice, to reassure her that he won’t gut abortion rights? Hard to say. If you’re a Maine resident and want to talk it over with someone from her staff, call (202) 224-2523 and press 0 to be connected.
Does Kavanaugh really believe that a sitting president can’t be investigated or indicted? Kavanaugh went out of his way to say that “no one is above the law,” and reiterated over and over the importance of an “independent judiciary,” but he evaded all Trump-related questions under the guise of wanting to “stay three zip codes away” from political matters. Fine.
What should concern us here is the same thing that’s concerned us since it was announced that Kavanaugh would be the Supreme Court nominee: Despite what his pals and coworkers would have us believe, he’s not coming into this nomination with a reputation for measuredness. On this issue, he’s coming in as a potential presidential appointee, culled from a short list of options, and what seemed to set him apart from everyone else was his stated belief that presidents shouldn’t have their days interrupted by investigations. Kavanaugh had the opportunity this week to assuage the country’s collective raised eyebrow on that one by firmly asserting that he wouldn’t let presidential power go unchecked. He simply didn’t do it. He wouldn’t tell the committee whether he’d recuse himself in Trump-related matters.
Furthermore, as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D—Rhode Island) pointed out, he may have chosen his words carefully to create an “escape hatch” that would allow him to spare President Trump from having to appear before a grand jury by differentiating those circumstances from ones that eventually led to President Richard Nixon handing over the infamous Watergate tapes. Clever.
How good of a friend would Kavanaugh be to the NRA? Uh, BFF-level, it seems. Claiming a blind loyalty to precedent once again, Kavanaugh more or less confirmed that he would be unlikely to vote for the regulation of semiautomatic weapons or the future regulation of 3-D printed weapons. He hinted at his personal ideas about how to deal with America’s mass-shooting crisis when he talked about his daughters’ (private) school: “They do a lot of things now that are different than they did just a few years ago in terms of trying to harden the school and make it safer for everyone.”
Wasn’t there something in the mix about him doing something sketchy with emails?Yes, though the implications are unclear. In the early 2000s, while he was working in the Bush administration, Kavanaugh was the recipient of some strategy intel on several Democratic congresspersons. As he testified this week, he didn’t know that the information had been stolen in a hack of the congresspersons’ emails. But Kavanaugh’s emails from back then—which leaked this week—make that theory seem kinda hard to believe. Much of the information that was passed on to Kavanaugh was still labeled “not for disclosure”—meaning that he wants us to believe he saw that and thought, “Well, shucks, I guess the Dems didn’t want anyone outside their office to see this except for me, a guy working in a Republican White House. Two points!” And, um, the subject heading of this one is literally “spying.” Anyway, seeing as double standards don’t exist, I’m sure we’ll be hearing cries of “But his emails!” any second now.
Lastly: Why was Kavanaugh taking notes with a Sharpie all week? Sir! What do you have against the other side of the paper?
Megan Angelo writes about TV and is the author of the novel Followers, which will be published in 2019.
Ariana Grande has been giving the world all the Pete Davidson intel lately. While promoting her new album Sweetener, she’s talked about how they first met and what it was like writing a song dedicated to her fiancé. Now, she’s going even further and sharing how their engagement went down. (Spoiler alert: It was super chill.)
Grande stopped by the Zach Sang Show just before the album dropped to talk about putting the album together and the new chapter it represents for her. Eventually, the conversation got into all the personal developments happening for the pop singer—specifically a certain Pete Davidson coming into her life and asking her to marry him after just a few weeks of dating. Apparently, that moment was a big one, but it was also super relaxed and didn’t involve all of the usual fanfare, like Davidson getting on one knee—which she appreciated.
“It was just really simple and really sweet. We were just hanging out, he had a ring, and uh, yeah. He just asked me. It was really sweet,” she said. “He didn’t get on a knee or anything, thank God… Oh my dog, that would’ve been so googly.”
Although we’re waiting for Grande to make “googly” happen, it sounds like a not-googly proposal is just what she needed: “I’m not like a very traditional person so the fact that I’m getting married is something I never even saw coming,” she said. “I never saw that coming, I never wanted that. I was like fuck that, what’s the point. And then I kind of understood it when it was, like, with the right person.”
When a fan asked about a rumor that Davidson had been high during the proposal, Grande laughed and quipped, “He’s always high!”
But while she was totally down to gush about her future husband (“He’s sick. He’s so dope. He’s a feminist, he’s tight,” she raved at one point), she got coy when she was asked about the wedding. “We’re waiting, but we’re planning and I’m not gonna tell anybody nothing,” she said, smiling. “I kind of don’t want to tell anybody anything until it’s, like, done.”
Luckily, we now have the proposal story to hold us over. Watch the interview below:
