Taylor Swift has a few key interests that we’ve heard about over the years: performing (duh), cats, and baking. Also up there on her list? Her famous squad, which is filled with a ton of celebrities you’d probably also want to hang out with. And sometimes, these interests intersect—as they did on Sunday, when she combined her love of baking and of her famous friends by making an adorable birthday cake for Selena Gomez](/about/selena-gomez), who turns 26 today (July 22).
Swift found time between her busy concert schedule to prepare a homemade (and tasty) tribute to one of her original squad members. She posted the end result on her Instagram Stories, and it’s truly glorious to behold. (We wouldn’t hate getting one ourselves, TBH.) Swfit captioned a picture of the cake she baked for Gomez: “Will distance stop me from celebrating my best friend’s bday? I MEAN I COULD BUT WHY WOULD I WANT 2.”
So cute—but now peep the cake. It’s emblazoned with a very clever “Gomez or go home,” plus a heart with “26” squarely in the center.
Gomez spent her birthday in California with friends as Swift was preparing for a show in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Grace VanderWaal posted pictures to Instagram of Selena’s surprise birthday celebrations, which involved cupcakes decorated with “Happy Birthday, Selena” spelled out in blue icing. (Note: Get friends who will commemorate your day of birth with baked goods on both coasts.)
Gomez’s California birthday crew went for lunch together on Saturday, before seeing VanderWaal open for Imagine Dragons in concert, per Instagram.
All in all, not a bad way to spend your birthday, TBH: best friends, concerts, cupcakes—especially when you’ve got your best friend in NYC doing the most for you. Happy birthday, Selena!
The first scene of The Bold Type’s second season, which premieres tonight, stays true to the show’s essence. In it, Jane (Katie Stevens) and Sutton (Meghann Fahy) are posted outside an airport gate waiting for their friend Kat (Aisha Dee) to return from her international flight. A 30-minute wait morphs into two hours. Then three. They’re exhausted, but they keep waiting. After all, Kat was abroad to win back her maybe-girlfriend Adena (Nikohl Boosheri). An intense situation like that warrants an immediate update, so Jane and Sutton wait.
When Kat eventually comes through the gate, Jane and Sutton’s energy resurges. They’re so happy to have their friend back—happy to again be the trio thousands of people grew to love when The Bold Type premiered last summer.
That, in a nutshell, sums up the appeal of this glossy Freeform show that follows three twenty-somethings as they climb the New York media ladder. You might have caught the show when it debuted in June 2017, but most likely watched on Hulu several months later—that’s really when The Bold Type gained its feverish following. And rightfully so: It’s quite simply one of the most delightful shows on television, one you shouldn’t sleep on anymore.
PHOTO: Freeform
Aisha Dee as Kat on The Bold Type
Especially not this season, when the stakes and the drama are higher than ever. You’ll be pleased to learn the two-hour premiere of The Bold Type‘s second chapter is good—very good. The show picks up where things left off last year: Jane quit Scarlet magazine to start work as a writer for the political website Incite. Sutton’s now a fashion assistant at the magazine and figuring out her relationship with Richard, an older executive within the company. Meanwhile, Kat traveled to South America to be with Adena, an artist who she may or may not be in love with. These issues are all addressed in the premiere, and fully resolved in surprising ways.
Fans will have a blast watching The Bold Type this season, but they don’t need more incentive to tune in. My goal here is to appeal to those who wrote the show off as just schmaltzy, shallow fare. While, yes, there’s definitely an element of froth to The Bold Type—the fictional world of Scarlet is very glitzy and celebrity-filled—it’s more than just pure escapism.
At the center of the show is an unbreakable friendship between three young women. The first season threw everything at Jane, Sutton, and Kat, yet their loyalty to each other never wavered. Sure, that might seem a bit overly earnest, but it’s actually pretty radical for a female-centered show, especially one that’s set in the world of magazines. The Devil Wears Prada, The Hills, Ugly Betty, and countless other shows set in fashion infamously presented a frigid, woman-eat-woman universe.
Then there’s female-driven programming at large. Gossip Girl, Big Little Lies, even The Real Housewives franchise: All these shows zero in on the catty behavior among its protagonists, who are, by and large, women. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; it’s unrealistic to expect characters to get along all the time, regardless of gender. You need conflict to move a story along, and watching a rich bitch on screen is, admittedly, so much fun.
But it’s nice that The Bold Type doesn’t have one. There’s this problematic idea in our society that women can’t get along with each other in the workplace. Take the Ocean’s 8 cast members, who were plagued by rumors of on-set feuding for months. “Certain members of the media have wanted us to fight each other…. They wanted there to be competition and catfights,” Anne Hathaway said on the Today show in May. That mentality filters into so much of the content we consume daily. We’re inundated with catfights.
Which is why a show like The Bold Type is such a breath of fresh air. For a series this dramatic and dishy and delicious to feature virtually no female fighting is exciting. It proves female-centered narratives can be captivating without the cattiness. Of course, Kat, Sutton, and Jane will most likely have an argument at some point—it’s inevitable—but it’s fine because the first point of entry for their characters isn’t “They hate each other.” That’s important, and it will fuel how all the conflict unfolds this season. No matter what storylines come their way, Jane, Sutton, and Kat will be OK. It’s just in their DNA.
PHOTO: Freeform
Katie Stevens as Jane on The Bold Type
If more shows like The Bold Type existed (alongside The Real Housewives; I’m not ready to give them up), then maybe these preconceived notions about women at work wouldn’t exist. Ocean’s 8 is certainly eradicating those notions. “We were all collaborating—all the time. Now we’re friends. We genuinely love each other and we’re so there for each other. It’s a beautiful thing,” Hathaway said about her Ocean’s 8 costars.
And so is The Bold Type. What the Ocean’s 8 women had offscreen is what The Bold Type leads have on, and we need to see more of that. Showcasing all types of female relationships on TV—the good and the bad—will certainly help debunk the reductive stereotypes that’ve existed in pop culture for eons. To believe it, you have to see it.
The Bold Type airs Tuesdays at 8:00 P.M. ET on Freeform.
It’s been a busy start to 2018 for the cast of Stranger Things, and they haven’t even started shooting season three yet. From partying at the Golden Globes to dominating the carpet at the SAG Awards, the cast has been celebrating their season two success before they return to Hawkins, Indiana this spring.
They’ve certainly earned the break—once filming begins, it’ll be non-stop work until the show returns in late 2018 or early 2019. “If we could make it [return] faster, then we would,” Executive Producer Shawn Levy explains. “But we’re going to make it well. We’re going to do it right.” The good news is that the Duffer Brothers and Levy have already planned out all of the story lines for season three. “We’re there,” Levy tells us. “It’ll be an eight or nine episode season. The number of episodes will be dictated by the amount of story that excites us. We now know what is going to happen in season three to every character.” Now that the season’s storyline is worked out, they’re in the process of figuring out the specific details of each scene in each episode.
While Levy is hesitant to reveal more beyond that, he will say that Will Byers is in need of a break after last season’s trauma from the aftermath of the Upside Down. “We’re going to give Will a break,” he says. “We’re not going to put Will through hell for a third season in a row. He’ll be dealing with stuff, but he won’t be at rock bottom the way we forced the amazing Noah Schnapp to play.” Of course, after battling the Shadow Monster one would assume Dustin or Hopper might be next in line to suffer the consequences. “You might assume that,” Levy teases, “but you would probably end up being wrong. We’re [going to be] dealing with forces of evil that are new.”
PHOTO: Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
Still, not everything will completely change heading into season three. After last year’s surprising—but welcome!—friendship between Dustin ([Gaten Matarazzo])(/about/gaten-matarazzo) and Steve (Joe Keery), Levy says you’ll definitely “get some Steve/Dustin action.” As for Matarazzo, he hopes there will be more light-hearted scenes with Steve and Dustin in season three, though he also wants to see their relationships evolve. “In season two, it was all very cute and there was a funny factor to it because it was unexpected, but now that it is expected, I want to see them connect more and be more familiar with each other,” he says. “I want them to have a connection like they’ve really had a connection for a year—like they’re brothers.” Matarazzo points out that Dustin doesn’t have a brother and his father is gone, so Dustin wants an older male figure in his life to look up to. “He’s never had that, so I feel like Steve is definitely someone in that sense who could be that person to him.”
And just as Dustin’s relationship with Steve will mature, could rebel Billy be the instigator for a more sexually liberated Mrs. Wheeler next season? “There was clearly a connection there,” Levy says. “Karen has some unhappiness that is brewing. I think that makes her vulnerable to all kinds of things in season three.” Perhaps those new “forces of evil” that Levy referred to earlier?
One thing still TBD is the future of Paul Reiser’s Dr. Owens, who managed to survive the chaos that engulfed Hawkins Lab at the end of season two. Levy says they’re “not commenting” on Reiser’s possible return, mainly because “I don’t have a clear cut answer for you yet.” In other words, stay tuned.
Tonight’s episode of The Big Bang Theory almost resulted in Sheldon and Amy’s wedding—but for diehard Shamy shippers, City Hall vows were thankfully not in the cards. Long-time fans of the couple have been hoping for a big wedding, and it seems that’s exactly what they’ll get.
To recap, Sheldon and Amy were fighting so much that they thought a no-frills wedding at the clerk’s office would solve everything. Sheldon, however, came to his senses and recognized that he needs a brain transplant. OK, not really, but he did finally act like a decent adult when he realized a successful relationship involves really listening to a partner’s wants and dreams. In this case, that’s a proper wedding to Amy with a real first dance and plenty of Little House on the Prairie references. As for when—well, that’s anyone’s guess, but at least things are finally moving in a more positive direction.
But the true heart of tonight’s episode—titled “The Confidence Erosion”—was Raj. This moment in the spotlight has been a long time coming: For years, the character has been the brunt of cheap jokes, ranging from his accent to his metrosexual tendencies. By now, those jokes have become outdated and stale. Raj knows this, but he’s never been one to make too much of anything. That all changed tonight, though, when Raj’s dad encouraged his son to take a long hard look at how Howard—Raj’s BFF—has treated him.
Raj tried to defend his friend—”Howard doesn’t mean anything by it. I think it’s cultural. His people come from a very sarcastic village called Brooklyn.”—but Raj’s father wasn’t hearing it. “Don’t make excuses,” he said. “What kind of friend acts that way? A bad friend!”
Dr. Koothrappali’s words stuck with Raj, who later went over to Penny and Leonard’s apartment to get their opinion. While Leonard agreed that Howard does make fun of Raj a lot, Penny dismissed it as good fun. “That’s just want friends do,” she said. “They bust on each other. It doesn’t mean anything.” That’s rather ironic coming from Penny, who has been the brunt of lame jokes from the guys for the better part of 200 episodes. Of course, she hasn’t been the nicest person either—especially to her husband—who called her out on her behavior.
But let’s get back to Raj, who later crushed it in this exchange with Howard:
Howard: Wanna grab some lunch? Raj: No, I don’t think so. Howard: Lemme guess, you’re not eating because the mean girls circled your chubby bits in marker. Raj: No, that, that right there! That’s the reason. You’re always making fun of me. Howard: Those are just jokes. It’s my way of saying we’re friends. And it wouldn’t hurt you to drop a few! Raj: See, no wonder I don’t have any confidence. Howard: Come on, you can’t blame that on me! Raj: Why not? 15 years of constant ridicule! I think our relationship has become toxic. Howard: What are you saying? Raj: I think you and I need to spend some time away from each other. Howard: Look, I can see you’re upset, but I’m gonna need some ground rules. While we’re apart, can I see other needy Indian men? Raj: GET OUT!
If that didn’t make Howard look like enough of an ass, then the fact that he later told Leonard and Sheldon that “Raj is trying to blame me for his pathetic life,” surely did.
PHOTO: Monty Brinton/CBS
And then, in a moment we never thought we’d see on the show, Raj showed up to Penny and Leonard’s with his natural hair. He revealed that when he first moved to the United States, he wanted to fit in: Because Howard’s hair was straight and he was the coolest person he knew, he took his lead.
The moment represents a breakthrough for Raj, who truly seems ready to embrace his authentic self. He doesn’t need Howard to be his therapist and leave him smiley face stickers on his lunch tray, but he certainly doesn’t need him to bring him down either. So, after Raj bombed an interview earlier in the episode to conduct presentations at the Planetarium, he mustered up the courage to go back to the hiring committee and make a stronger case for himself. His newfound confidence (and a little help from external circumstances) helps him get hired, but it’s a bittersweet achievement given that he can’t go and tell his best friend. Leonard urges him to do so anyway, but Raj remains steadfast in his decision. “No, I don’t need his negative energy in my life right now,” he explained. “Standing up to him was hard, but it made me realize I can do anything.”
It was a profound moment for myriad reasons, namely that by the time the credits rolled, Raj and Howard hadn’t reconciled. They may very well next week, but it was nice to see the weight of Raj’s feelings act as a connective tissue through each scene. He was undoubtedly sad to cut Howard out of his life, but empowered by his ability to do so. If and when the two repair their friendship, it will only be because Howard has understood the hurt caused by his actions, and Raj finally understands his worth.
Two thousand eight was a momentous year: Juno and Ratatouille won Oscars, the American economy hit record lows, and Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift were each dating a Jonas brother (Nick and Joe, respectively). And though neither relationship made it to 2009, Gomez and Swift’s friendship stood the test of time and has become, according to Gomez, the “best thing” either of them got out of their short-lived, late-aughts love stories.
“We actually dated the Jonas brothers together! It was hysterical,” Gomez said during a visit to British radio station KISS FM this week. “It was amazing, because she was the girl with the big curly hair and all the bracelets and the cowboy boots. And I was definitely up-and-coming, and we just clicked. It was the best thing we got out of those relationships.” Gomez also noted that she’d be willing to duet with Swift “anytime, any place,” saying, “She has been a fighter, a warrior, and a friend through all of this.”
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Gomez, who is now sparking rumors of a rekindled romance with Justin Bieber, hastily added that there are no hard feelings between the two superstar pals and their boy-band exes. “They’re lovely, by the way. We’re all friends now,” she said. “We were young, you know; it’s a different time.” She and Nick have proved that they’re some of the best and most supportive exes in Hollywood: In 2015 she told Capital FM that they speak and hang out regularly. “We actually caught up the other day, and it’s really fun to be able to do that,” she said, adding that their relationship “was like puppy love. It was very sweet. He’s lovely. I do have a love for him for sure.” The following year Nick raved about Gomez’s recent work. “Selena has been incredibly, incredibly smart,” he told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “She played me Revival maybe six months before it came out, and I knew, like, this is excellent.”
And this summer, not long after the “Wolves” singer revealed that she had undergone a kidney transplant, Nick wished her well in an interview with SiriusXM’s Hits 1. “I was as surprised as everyone else when I woke up and saw her Instagram,” he said. “But wow, just incredible. And the strength she’s shown through all that’s amazing and inspiring. And I’m pumped for her. I’m happy to see that she’s doing well, it seems, and that she was able to get the surgery. And her friend helping her was a beautiful thing, so it’s all amazing.”
As for Swift and the elder Jonas, although they have yet to be as publicly friendly as Nick and Gomez, they did once go on an intimate river cruise in London together when Joe was dating Gigi Hadid and Swift was with Calvin Harris back in 2015. Both Jonases were also invited to Swift’s infamous Fourth of July party that same year. Would it be too far-fetched to expect to see Swift and Gomez at Joe’s upcoming wedding to Sophie Turner?
Sometimes, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. And according to Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, that’s exactly what they did when they signed on to produce and star in HBO’s Big Little Lies.
At the 2017 Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night, the show took home the award for Outstanding Limited Series, and Kidman and Witherspoon stepped up to give an empowering acceptance speech in honor of their women-centered show. After doling out the requisite thank-yous to the network and other powers that be, Witherspoon sent her thanks to Liane Moriarty, “who wrote the bestselling book and created these characters who are so memorable.” She added: “It has been an incredible year for women. Can I just say bring women to the front of their own stories, and make them the hero of their own stories.” Then she cried out, “Oh my gosh, Nicole, help!”
Kidman continued the speech, saying, “Thank you to the people that embraced this, the power of television. It has astounded us that we entered into your living rooms and people talked about it. And as much as the show had entertainment value, it was also about issues. We are so grateful that you told your friends to watch the show,” she said.
The Australia-born actress, who had beat Witherspoon only minutes before to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie, finished on a powerful note in which she referenced her close relationship with Witherspoon. “This is a friendship that then created opportunities. It created opportunities out of a frustration, because we weren’t getting offered great roles,” Kidman, 50, said. “So now, more great roles for women, please.”
Witherspoon, 41, has spoken out time and again about the need for more complex roles for women in television and movies. Most recently, she penned an essay for Glamour in which she encouraged women to embrace their ambition and discussed her own efforts to share the stories of diverse women. “Today I have something like 23 projects in the works driven by great female characters of different ages and races. There is a film about an astronaut, a film about the entrepreneur who invented Barbie, and a film about the young, brave American girls who were the first women to serve alongside Special Ops in 2010 in Afghanistan,” she wrote. “All we can do to create change is work hard. That’s my advice: Just do what you do well.” She added, “If you are one of those people who has that little voice in the back of her mind saying, ‘Maybe I could do [fill in the blank],’ don’t tell it to be quiet. Give it a little room to grow, and try to find an environment it can grow in.”
