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The True Story Behind the Final Scene of 'A Star Is Born' Will Make You Cry All Over Again


Warning: Spoilers for A Star Is Born ahead!

The final scene in A Star Is Born—in which Lady Gaga sings the powerful ballad “I’ll Never Love Again”—is more than enough to have anyone sobbing into their popcorn. But in case the movie didn’t leave you gutted enough, the real-life tragedy that occurred in Gaga’s life the same day she filmed the heartbreaking scene will have you crying all over again.

In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Gaga revealed that while she was on set getting ready to shoot, she received news that one of her closest friends, Sonja Durham, was nearing the end of her battle with stage IV cancer. “On that day my friend Sonja—who had been battling cancer for years—her friend called me and I could hear her moaning in the background and she said she’s not doing well,” Gaga said. “And I thought she was dying, so I left the set.”

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The pop star says she didn’t even tell costar and director Bradley Cooper that she had left. “I just got in my car and started driving and I missed her by 10 minutes,” she said.

Gaga shared that she laid with Sonja’s son and husband, and consulted her friend’s widower about whether she should return to set. “He said, ‘You’ve gotta do what Sonja would want you to do,'” Gaga recalled. “She gave me a tragic gift that day and I took it with me to set, and I sang that song for Jackson and for her on that very same day within an hour.”

When she returned to set, she said, Cooper was kind and supportive in the wake of her loss. “Bradley was so beautiful with me that day, he was so loving. He was like, ‘You don’t have to do it too many times, it’s OK.’ And, I was like, ‘All I wanna do is sing, man,'” she said.

And so Gaga stepped in front of the camera and sang lyrics that had suddenly become even more poignant than they already are in the context of the film. “Wish I could, I could have said goodbye / I would have said what I wanted to, maybe even cried for you / If I knew it would be the last time / I would have broke my heart in two / Tryin’ to save a part of you,” she sings, per Genius.

In the interview, Gaga continued, “Life is hard, man, but we’ve gotta stick together. What’s more important than any of this, the fame, the accolades? What’s important is the process of love and kindness. I think the star of this film is human courage, bravery.”

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'The Big Bang Theory' Season 12, Episode 2 Recap: The Story Behind 'The Wedding Gift Wormhole'


Sheldon and Amy’s honeymoon kicked off The Big Bang Theory‘s final season, but it was the second episode of the week—titled “The Wedding Gift Wormhole”—that brought real fun for the couple.

Leonard and Penny give “the perfect wedding gift” to Sheldon and Amy. It’s a sweet gesture, but there’s one problem: The newly marrieds have no clue what it is. The gift, a crystal wand, looks expensive but has no obvious purpose. Naturally, Amy wonders if it’s a marital aid. (God, I’m going to miss this show next year.)

Of course, it’d be inappropriate to ask Leonard and Penny what the gift actually is…but Sheldon is the king of inappropriate questions. You’d think he could have solved this in minutes. Maybe married life has changed him after all? Instead, while Amy and Sheldon are in bed one night, they come to the conclusion that the gift is simply a clue about their actual gift, which they’ll find by going on a scavenger hunt.

Turns out, the idea for this episode was actually born out of the same exact gift that executive producer Steve Holland received from the show’s visual effects supervisor. “The gift we got is the same gift you see in the episode,” Holland says. “It is a wand. The joke was when we got it, we didn’t quite know what it was. We had it it the writers’ room for years and we’d joke about it, so we decided to turn that into an episode where Sheldon and Amy get the wedding gift that they don’t know what it is.”

To this day, Holland doesn’t even know if the wand is expensive or worth anything. “I just know it’s not a marital aid,” he jokes.

By the episode’s end, we learn the wand actually belonged to Raj, who gave it as a wedding gift to Bernadette and Howard, who then gave it to Penny and Leonard, who then gave it to Shamy. The moral of this story? They all need better friends. If Raj does get married this season, he better register for some expensive stuff—and hope he doesn’t get a random hand-me-down.

Related: Is There a Chance for a Big Bang Theory Spin-Off?



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Jessica Lange's Return to *American Horror Story* Already Has Us Shaking


The moment fans have been waiting (and fearing) for is finally here: Jessica Lange, High Priestess of American Horror Story, is making her return to the series, and we have the first look.

The show’s creator, Ryan Murphy, took to Instagram Wednesday morning (September 19) to share a glimpse of “Queen Constance,” reincarnated seven years after she first scared fans to death.

“To celebrate 300k followers, here’s a first look at the return of Queen Constance…the one and only Lady Lange…being directed by that dynamo of wit and talent Sarah Paulson. Love them both!” he captioned a photo of the happy-looking pair standing in what appears to be a backyard—the backyard of the OG Murder House, perhaps? While there isn’t a whole lot of context to pick up on in the shot, it does confirm that Lange’s appearance will coincide with the special episode Paulson is directing, which, according to Marie Claire, will be the sixth in the season.

Lange is an American Horror Story legend, having appeared on the first four seasons of the horror anthology, but taking a step away for the past three. She first appeared as Constance in season one’s Murder House, followed by Sister Jude in season two’s Asylum, Fiona Goode in season three’s Coven, and Elsa Mars in season four’s Freak Show. Her roles in Murder House and Coven earned her two Emmys and a Golden Globe, so seeing Constance revived for season eight is so much more exciting.

The highly anticipated new season, which began airing last week, is expected to bring back characters from both the Coven and Murder House iterations of the anthology.

In the AHS universe, many Jessica Langes are clearly better, and scarier, than one.

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Read This Before Asking Why Christine Blasey Ford Waited to Tell Her Brett Kavanaugh Story


On Monday, the #MeToo movement will get its highest wattage moment yet when psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testify in front of Congress about one night in Maryland over 36 years ago.

Ford’s lawyer calls what happened an “attempted rape,” involving Kavanaugh shutting her in a bedroom, pinning her down while pawing at her bathing suit, and clapping a hand over her mouth when she screamed; Kavanaugh says he “categorically and unequivocally” never did anything of this sort to Ford or anyone else.

Monday’s hearing is being touted by lawmakers as a chance to find out the truth. But it’s also going to be, in many ways, a public trial for the woman who accused Kavanaugh. With rape culture and victim shaming working overtime, as it so often does in our society, a familiar question will be on the table: Why did she wait so long to come forward?

Conservatives are already teeing up the argument that jumping on a girl and pawing at her is the type of every day occurrence that shouldn’t make headlines. “Sorry, but having a drunk 17 year old BOY grope you at a teenage party is not newsworthy!” one Twitter user posted this week. And by the standards of 1982, when the alleged incident occurred, they’re right. That adds context when considering Ford’s decision to keep the experience to herself. Back then, the phrase “date rape” was newly minted in the lexicon and not widely used. Boys did whatever they wanted to girls. And girls mostly accepted this as the natural order of the species. “Boys will be boys,” explained a lawyer for three high school football players in Glen Ridge, N.J. who sexually assaulted a mentally disabled 17-year-old girl with a baseball bat and a broom handle in 1993.

Back then, as I chronicled in my book Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, Americans didn’t consider anything that wasn’t a violent assault by a stranger to be rape. Even intellectuals in the 1980s and 1990s didn’t take sexual assault all that seriously—they treated it more as a philosophical koan of sex relations than an important social issue. In David Mamet’s Oleanna, a play about a feminist college student who accuses her professor of rape, he calls her “frightened, repressed, confused . . . abandoned young thing of some doubtful sexuality who wants power and revenge.” Controversial academic Camille Paglia, extremely popular in those decades, argued that masculine sexual aggression was normal, and a woman’s only choice was to protect herself; to say otherwise, she declared later, was to join a brigade of “fanatical sex phobes.”

In our era of #MeToo reckoning, these voices have become quieter and things have finally started to change. But things haven’t changed enough for one woman’s word to be believed simply on its own without corroborating evidence. Or without the argument that her experience has timed-out—that statue of limitations exist when it comes to trauma.

If history is any indication (or Justice Clarence Thomas’ defense when accused of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991) Kavanaugh is going to use the usual playbook to defend himself: calling himself a standup fellow—or, as Kellyanne Conway said, “a man of character and integrity”—and explaining he’s shocked, simply shocked, by this character assassination. He’ll talk about being raised right by his parents and point out that he’s a “carpool dad” for his two daughters, hoping that their mere existence will act as a shield against accusations against a member of their sex. But most importantly, he’ll talk about whether Ford told anyone at the time what happened that night.

No one who understands the nature of trauma and sexual assault thinks that it’s a big deal when women don’t tell an authority for months or years about an assault. Not every woman wants to upend her life in the pursuit of justice, or even deal with criticism about “playing the victim” from their peers or institutions. Couple that with an era where women, if something bad happened with a guy, would likely keep it to themselves due to the blasé attitude surrounding sexual violence and the permission boys and men had to engage in it. A cool Gen-X girl brushed off anything untoward, knowing there was no percentage in calling a boy out because even if a few of her friends believed her, the rest of the school would not. And how could they? In the 1980s, there were no tools and very little language to identify or corroborate assault.

As a friend who went to high school in the 1980s posted on Facebook this week, what might have happened to Ford “happened all the time when I was growing up and no doubt still does.”

“This is such a common story,” she wrote. “This happened ALL THE TIME. What also happened all the time was that women who this happened to didn’t really talk about it much because, see above.” Whether Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court or sent off to play endless rounds of golf, one thing we know is that women aren’t being quiet about this any longer. But in addressing sexual misconduct, we must also grapple with our past and understand that the experiences of women of a certain age group cannot be examined without historical context. We cannot dismiss claims with the lazy excuse that “that’s how it was then.”

In fact, in cases like Ford’s, there’s no excuse to resort to old victim-shaming tropes. We have the tools, now. We must use them.

Vanessa Grigoriadis is the author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, out October 2018, and a contributing writer at The New York Times magazine and Vanity Fair.





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The Story Behind A. Human, the Brand That Did Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen's Body Modifications


Last week, Kim Kardashian West made headlines for a series of selfies she posted on Instagram. That alone isn’t newsworthy—Kim posted selfies? The sky is blue?—but these were…bizarre.

In the videos, Kim wears a choker implant that appears to be under her skin. Oh, and it glows.

Naturally, these selfies were met with a mixture of awe, revulsion, and intrigue. People began speculating about the how and the why. Is this permanent? Will it become A Thing?

Then, Chrissy Teigen and Tan France jumped on the bandwagon, showing off their own skin implants on social media.

As they say, three makes a trend.

The celebrities all name-checked A. Human, a mysterious company nobody had heard of before, in their posts. This led many, myself included, to ask: What is A. Human?

I did some digging and the short version is that it’s a new exhibit produced by Society of Spectacle, a live entertainment storytelling brand founded by publicist and longtime Kardashian associate Simon Huck (which explains Kim’s early participation). A. Human bills itself as a “fashion brand from the future,” but, essentially, it’s a tongue-in-cheek art installation that asks, “What is the future of self expression? If you could change your body as easily as you change your clothing, would you?”

PHOTO: Nicholas Hunt

Simon Huck and Jonathan Cheban at the opening of A. Human in New York.

Still, I had a lot of questions. How did this exhibit come to be? Are they actually offering body modifications? If so, how much does that cost? Have the celebrity trifecta of Kim, Chrissy, and Tan made this cool?

So I went straight to the source: Huck. Below, some answers.

What is A. Human?

According to Huck, A. Human is “a futuristic fashion brand” that “displays body modifications” instead of clothing.

Huh?

When I ask Huck to elaborate, he says: “I would call A. Human a one-hour Disney World thrill ride for adults that takes place in a futuristic retail store environment.”

OK, but what does that mean?

TL;DR, it’s an Instagram-friendly art installation—kind of like the Museum of Ice Cream or Color Factory.

How can I go?

Right now, A.Human is only in NYC from September 5 to 30. The entry fee is $40, and tickets are available online.

What do those celebrity body modification selfies have to do with A. Human?

Huck says he presented these “friends of the A. Human brand” with the installation’s concept, and they were all on board to have fun and promote it with selfies. While he wouldn’t reveal how they created each look, he concedes that the celebrities were involved in the design process for their body modifications.

“From the early sketches down to the actual development of each piece, Kim was very specific with her implanted choker,” Huck says. “We worked together to design that and then of course have that LED technology, which synched to her heart.” Of course.

Can I get a modification like Kim’s at the exhibit?

Nope. There are live models wearing (?) different body modifications on display, which are cool, but the installation is more about the ‘gram opportunities. In fact, the staff actively volunteers to take photos of you with the installations, like this not-at-all-terrifying one of me below:

Wait, “live models”?

Yes, there are actual humans with the modifications there, literally in display cases. (It feels a little like Ripley’s Believe It or Not, But Make It Fashion or a Chic Coney Island Circus Sideshow.) For example:

A. Human Launch Event Hosted By Simon Huck

PHOTO: Nicholas Hunt

A. Human Launch Event Hosted By Simon Huck

PHOTO: Nicholas Hunt

But it’s a “fashion brand”? So can you actually buy something to wear?

There’s a $40 T-shirt of a heart you can customize, available at the flagship exhibit and online.

I don’t live in NYC. Will A. Human go on the road?

“We are debating whether A. Human travels to other cities. … We had offers in London and Hong Kong,” Huck tells me. “We are excited by the interest, but we haven’t made any decisions yet.”

Will there be more exhibits like this?

A. Human is the first exhibit from Society of Spectacle, which Huck describes as “a live storytelling brand that takes on thought-provoking concepts.” He told me they have several of these “concepts” in the hopper, but nothing he’s able to share just yet.

Just tell me: Should I visit A. Human?

Depends. Are you low on content?

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Jared and Ashley Reveal the Story Behind Their Bachelor in Paradise Engagement


Ever since Bachelor nation couple Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon announced their surprise engagement, which finally aired on tonight’s Bachelor in Paradise, fans have wondered if this friendship-to-romance fairytale was the real deal. Yes, there’s a 2.4 karat Neil Lane ring involved, but did the guy who friend-zoned Ashley on multiple seasons of BiP really do a complete 180? And wasn’t she kind of serious with Kevin on Bachelor Winter Games earlier this year?

The short answer to both: Yes. The couple stopped by Glamour‘s west coast offices recently to talk about their relationship, which you can see in the video below, and their banter and PDA didn’t stop—even when the cameras weren’t rolling. Or, as Ashley put it during our interview, “Look at this man. He’s so perfect. How did my soulmate come in such a beautiful package?”

Now, the wedding countdown begins (“We’re thinking about next August, but definitely within the next 14 months,” Ashley says). Until then, we had plenty of pressing questions to ask. Like, who won’t be at the wedding? And how did that Bachelor in Paradise engagement go down? Read on for more.

Glamour: Who are you inviting?

Ashley Iaconetti: Well, all our friends. A lot of [Bachelor] production.

Jared Haibon: When it comes to the guest list, I can guarantee you there’ll be times we feel really awkward saying, “Yeah, you’re just not invited.”

Ashley: There are a lot of people who are like, “I better be invited to the wedding,” and I’ll be like, “Hmmm. Not.”

Jared: A lot of people have already been like, “We better be invited to the wedding!” And it’s like, “I know you’re not joking.”

Glamour: Who are these people?

Jared: People from Bachelor family who we’re kind of friends with, but we’re certainly not close enough to invite to the wedding. But seeing how it’s a very public wedding, I’m sure they’re like, “Of course I’m going to get invited!” I mean, I haven’t even started thinking of a guest list, but I’m already fearful.

Glamour: Do you feel pressure to invite the Bachelor or Bachelorette whose season you were on originally?

Jared: No.

Ashley: Oh, hell naw! Hells to the naw!

Jared: Well, I would want Kaitlin (Bristowe) and Shawn (Booth) there.

Ashley: I think Kaitlin and Shawn would make the invite because I would naturally invite Kaitlin; she was a big part of my experience on this franchise. That is funny, that he would have a girl he’s made out with at the wedding.

Glamour: But not Caila Quinn [who Jared dated the last time he was on Paradise]?

Ashley: Oh, hell to the naw! [Laughs]

Jared: We’re just not friends with Caila. I wish Caila all the best.

Glamour: Well said. Ashley, you’ve gone through so much heartbreak on the show. If you could go back and tell yourself one thing, what would you say?

Ashley: Hold on. Just keep holding out hope! You’re really good holding on hope, just keep doing it. [Laughs]

Glamour: For anyone who has ever been told it’s never going to happen with the person they are interested in, what kind of message does your relationship send? Or is this an exception to the rule?

Ashley: We say we’re an exception to the rule. When I read the hater boards and stuff, a lot of people are like, “They shouldn’t be thinking they’re role models for a relationship.” We don’t! In He’s Just Not That Into You, I’m the Ginnifer Goodwin character. I am the exception to the rule. Most people who are so in love with somebody and they just don’t feel the same way back for like, two plus years, it’s probably not going to happen. You should probably move on. In a way, I moved on. For a solid year before Jared actually admitted his feelings, I was like, I guess it’ll never happen.

Glamour: And you truly believed that?

Ashley: I honestly thought that our marriage pact was the only way Jared and I would be getting married. If we were both not married by 35. I was like, I bet you there’s a solid chance we’ll both be single by 35 if we’re not together and we’ll probably end up together and live a happy life. I didn’t think he was going to come out with those [feelings]. We get the greatest comments about hope and how we give people hope and they believe in love again. It’s the nicest thing we could ever hear from people. But when there is a friend-zone situation, I want to be like, here’s the best advice: Jared said if I were to have cut him off cold-turkey a couple years ago, he would have come back. All this would have happened way sooner. So, I think that’s the test for people who are stuck in the friend zone. Cut him [or her] off, and if they don’t come back…

Jared: Then it’s over.

Ashley: Then it’s not going to happen.

Jared: I completely agree.

Glamour: Jared, there was always a spark with Ashley though, right?

Jared: There was never nothing. We got along really well, but for me, there wasn’t that romantic, boom, fireworks. A lot of it had to do with timing. It was literally a month after I finished The Bachelorette, which I was very invested in, when Ashley crossed my path [on Paradise]. Even if it was really good, I was like, “No, no, no, no, it’s not going to work out.” I never really gave that an opportunity. What’s funny, though, is that I always knew I was going to have some sort of romantic-comedy spin on my love life. I just didn’t know it would end up like this.

Ashley: You sure got it!

Glamour: Let’s talk about going to Bachelor in Paradise this year. Why were you even going in the first place?

Ashley: I thought we were going to [give out] a date card. We had been down there during Paradise season three and Jade and Tanner came down there for a date card.

Glamour: Who arranged for this to even happen? Jared?

Ashley: He handled most of the arrangements for the first time. I’m usually our travel coordinator. But, I was like, in the case that this is what I hope it is, I’m just going to let him deal….

Glamour: What do you mean “in the case that this is what I hope it is?”

Ashley: I mean, I definitely hoped we were going there to get engaged. I think any girl in my shoes would definitely think that, too.

Jared: I agree. She was definitely dropping hints that she was going to say yes. She was saying, “Hey, if you ask me tomorrow to get engaged I’d say yes.” She’d even say that we’re not going to live together until we get engaged. So, she was definitely dropping a lot of hints. I was trying to keep it from her, but I knew as soon as I started talking to ABC [about] going to Paradise, and I was telling Ashley we were going to make a cameo…

Glamour: Did you suggest going to Paradise to get engaged?

Ashley: I may have done the initial planting.

Jared: No, you didn’t.

Ashley: I kind of told [one of the producers] back in the day, “We’ll see where this is going. If this is going as well as it is right now, maybe we’ll talk to you about things we can do in Paradise.” They would have talked to [Jared] regardless.

Jared: I give you a lot of credit for a lot of things, but I give you zero credit for that.

Ashley: [Laughs]

Glamour: So, you went down with the impression you were giving out a date card, which makes sense.

Ashley: Oh, yeah, it makes total sense. There were so many other couples down there. So many people made cameo appearances.

Jared: It wasn’t really out of the ordinary for us to go there.

Ashley: The more couples and people I knew were going down there, the less likely it seemed like we were going to get engaged. It actually made me feel like, Oh, everybody’s doing it.

Glamour: Let’s say it wasn’t an option to get engaged on Bachelor in Paradise. Would you have still proposed now, Jared?

Jared: Probably right around there. I remember talking to a lot of my friends and family about whether it was too soon to get engaged in Paradise. They were like, “Well, when do you see yourself proposing?” and I was like, “I don’t know, maybe six months from now.” So they said, “You’re going to wait six more months when this opportunity is presented to you? What are you, out of your mind?”

Ashley: Remember that conversation we had four days before we went to Paradise? I was like, “We’d have to be married by 31, so we can have a year married by the time we start trying to have kids.” And you were like, “What? 31? That’s like, next year!” He was like, “That’s so soon!”

Glamour: So you had started talking about having a family?

Jared: Of course. We started planning a family the day we became boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s not scary for us. I think that’s a big part of the relationship. It’s not scary for us to talk about the future because we want the future to be with both of us.

Glamour: How many kids do you want?

Jared and Ashley simultaneously: Two to three. [Laughs]

Glamour: What was the funniest reaction you heard from your friends in Bachelor Nation when they found out?

Ashley: I think they weren’t that surprised. They were like, “This is how we do things around here.”

Glamour: After your engagement is shown on Paradise, when will viewers see you two on TV again? Would you ever have your own show?

Jared: We’d be open to it.

Ashley: We’d definitely want to be producers on it because we wouldn’t want to be in one of those Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey situations. So many couples who’ve had reality shows, it just breaks them. We’d need to be heavily involved.



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