It may not come as a shock to those who follow royal-family news that Prince Harry and Prince William are reportedly on the outs regarding the former’s choice to step down from his senior royal duties and move to Canada. Basically, initial reports that the brothers reconciled during “secret peace talks” have been greatly exaggerated. A “family friend” has recently come forward to confirm the rift is very much a thing…but it’s closing.
“They didn’t leave on good terms by any means, but they are both relieved that it’s over,” this “friend” told People.
While it seems there’s more work to be done to repair the brothers’ damaged relationship, the two are “talking more,” according to another palace source.
There’s a distance between you and me….
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Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and baby Archie are reportedly settling into their new normal in Vancouver Island. “They are enjoying living a quiet life,” a source told People. “They go for long walks, they do yoga, and Meghan cooks. They are real homebodies who love to chill out with Archie and the dogs.” I mean, same.
“This decision [to leave] had been weighing on them for a long time, and they are relieved to have it done,” another friend chimed in to People. “A weight has been lifted off their shoulders.”
Prince William isn’t the only one Prince Harry is calling up, though. A source told the Sun that the younger prince is working hard to keep up with his friends back in the U.K. “Harry misses his friends, of course—anyone would,” the source said. “But he has been in WhatsApp group with his mates for years, and he uses that more than ever now to keep in touch and send pictures…. Harry doesn’t think being on the other side of the world means that he will lose touch with the people he has been mates with all his life.”
So Hall pitched a daytime show rooted in those conversations to Disney-ABC. They were in. Her self-titled talk show will be syndicated across the country on ABC affiliate stations and feature a mix of real women and celebrities. The format will vary from episode to episode, ranging from interviews to lifestyle segments, but Hall wants to give the traditional talk show structure an injection of 2019 culture. She says she’ll begin all conversations by asking guests about their sexual orientation and relationship status, before diving into a round of real talk.
In many ways, Tamron Hall will be the anti-Dr. Phil. Think: no paternity tests, but plenty of hormone testing. Or as Hall puts it, “If you go on [Dr. Phil] your relationship is already in trouble. It’s not fixable. For us, it’s having that authentic conversation you would have with your girlfriends. Like about fertility. I interviewed a woman who recently froze her eggs at 35 because she thought it was putting pressure on her relationships. That’s a major modern woman decision. That’s our show.”
Celebrities will also be prominently featured on Tamron Hall, but she plans to engage them on these issues. Her dream guest is Celine Dion—not to discuss her fashion or iconic career, but rather her fertility journey. “Celine’s a well-known person,” Hall explains, “but with the birth of her children that was a woman who wanted to be a mother and did what it took to get there.”
And while the past few months have been an embarrassment of riches (albeit hard-fought ones), Hall is now figuring out how to “have it all.” She employs a nanny (something she wishes more women in the public eye would be vocal about); she insists on a dedicated half hour of cuddles with her son at 6:45 each morning; her husband, music manager Steven Greener, begins his day a bit later so he can finish Moses’ morning care. Even with the help, it’s not an easy schedule. “There’s no balance. I don’t know what that means,” she says. “There are some days where I look at my son in his crib in the morning when it’s dark and I’m flying a 5:00 in the morning flight to go promote the show, and I start crying because when it will be midnight [when I get back to the apartment] and he’ll be asleep. So he went the whole day without seeing me. But that’s the reality of it.”
These issues—marriage, motherhood, and figuring out how to make it all work—are the types of conversations Hall has been spending her days unpacking with her team, all of whom she hand selected. Early on, Hall says, she went to a development meeting for the program and found herself in a room of all men. Hall put her foot down: She never wanted to be the only woman in the room again. “Daytime television is predominantly watched by women,” she explains. “[Men are] not representative of the viewership. We need diversity in television, and it’s not just race. It’s geography, it’s different walks of life.” All of which she took care to have reflected in her staff. Hall’s creative team is now 30% black women. Many of the senior staffers are mothers. Women fill out nearly all of the key roles.
Now, with Tamron Hall on air, Hall wants to give herself the opportunity to marvel at how far she’s come. “I get emotional thinking about it. It’s been a hell of a journey,” she says. “People tell you to be proud of yourself. We tell our friends and our kids they should be proud. Yet when you actually are proud of yourself, you get shamed for that pride. With this show, whatever the outcome, I will be proud of myself.”
After a former student with an AR-15 killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida earlier this year, a group of outspoken student activists demanded change. Gun violence needs to end—and they’re not taking no for an answer. They joined with other leaders to organize March for Our Lives. And on November 11, four survivors and activists from different communities across the country—Naomi Wadler, Edna Lizbeth Chavez, Samantha Fuentes, and Jaclyn Corin—took the stage at Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year Summit to talk about how you, too, can become an activist on your own terms.
In a discussion moderated by Glamour senior editor Mattie Kahn, the young women, who are also being honored as Glamour Women of the Year, touched on intersectional activism, female strength, and optimism. Below, their best advice.
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images
Glamour Senior Editor Mattie Kahn with Naomi Wadler, Edna Lizbeth Chavez, Samantha Fuentes, and Jaclyn Corin
On creating an intersectional movement: From the early days of March for Our Lives, the activists stressed the importance of intersectional activism. “It’s not just one person representing all, it’s everyone representing their own stories,” Chavez, an 18-year-old from South Central L.A. currently enrolled as a first-generation student at Cal State, explained. “I can’t speak for Parkland [survivors], I can’t speak for Naomi, and they can’t speak for me. It’s important to highlight and get voices of the youth from all across and all ages.”
Corin, one of the survivors from the Parkland shooting, spoke about how her involvement in March for Our Lives has educated her about her privilege as a white woman from a suburban area. “I can’t speak on gun violence in brown and black communities because I never experience violence until February 14,” she told the audience. “We needed to connect with kids from around the nation to make sure all voices are represented because, ultimately, gun violence is multi-faceted… I have vowed to myself that I will continue to [learn about this] my whole life, because there are so many people who experience this around the nation.”
On how adults should be talking to young people about these issues:“[Adults] feel like they’re passing the baton to us,” Fuentes observed. “There’s not enough communication and collaboration between the youth and the people running the country. If there’s no communication, how are we ever going to come to a solution that we can agree upon?” Both groups can learn from each other, she says. By collaborating and teaching each other about their experiences, we can “accomplish great things.”
Wadler understands first-hand about having to justify her place in this conversation: She’s 12 now, but she was 11 when she started receiving national attention for her activism. “Part of the concern with me being 12 and 11 is that I shouldn’t know this—I should be protected, I should be in this bubble, I shouldn’t be exposed to the terrible things going on in the world,” she told the audience. “I think a lot of parents don’t think that their kids are aware of what they are aware of… because they don’t pay attention. They expect their kids to say in their bubble.” Wadler believes that parents and schools should be incorporating these topics into their curriculum and conversations, to educate them not only on the issues, but also on what they can do about them.
“If we’re old enough to experience the violence, we’re old enough to talk about it,” added Corin.
PHOTO: Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images
Glamour Senior Editor Mattie Kahn with activists Jaclyn Corin, Naomi Wadler, Samantha Fuentes, and Edna Lizbeth Chavez
On their understanding of female strength: Something else Wadler has learned through her activism, particularly as an African American female leader, is all the boxes people want to put you in—whether that’s “black” or “from the inner city”—which, she feels detracts from what you can do together, as a community, to address certain issues. “We shouldn’t be making up ways to divide ourselves furthermore,” she explained.
Being a part of the March for Our Lives movement has given Fuentes a community of diverse women she can relate to. “For a woman of color who is also bisexual and who is open on platforms, I get attacked regularly, just for waking up in the morning and having something to believe in,” she shared. But this group and its members, “it makes my purpose a lot stronger and a lot concrete to me.”
“The more strong women in the world, the stronger the world gets,” Fuentes continued, to which Corin added: “The midterm elections actually had over 100 women elected to Congress—the most ever. We’re living in a time where it’s transforming in front of our eyes.”
On optimism—and understanding disappointment: “In order for us to do a lot of this work, we need to be open-minded and open-hearted,” Chavez explained. That means not giving up, but also preparing for reality to set in. “I always quote my grandpa, and what he always tells me, La misma persona que cae en la boca del diablo es la misma persona que puede salir.” That roughly translates to: The same person that falls into the mouth of the devil is the same person who can get himself out. “Even though there are disappointments in front of you, you can still overcome them, despite the negativity that is thrown at you,” she said.
Corin feels motivated by “the conversations we have with students and youth leaders across the country,” noting how she finds them to be more engaged and attentive to the issues that matter—something “that’s only going to continue to increase… We’re going to make civic and political engagement in our youth normalized moving forward.”
Oh, and one last note from her: “Please register to vote.”
Find out more about Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year here.
LeAnn Rimes is, without a doubt, a confident woman. For over 20 years, the Grammy winner has cemented her place in music history as one of the most successful musicians ever. But when it came to starring in, producing, and creating original songs for her first ever Hallmark Christmas movie, It’s Christmas, Eve, which premieres tomorrow, she was nervous.
“I’m kind of no bullshit [with work],” she tells Glamour.com. “If we have to get something done, we’re going to get it done, get it done properly, and not waste anybody’s time. But I walked into this movie very timid at first. Acting isn’t something I do all the time, and it’s not like breathing to me the way singing is. The last acting role I did was about seven years ago. I just haven’t done it as often.”
And yet within the first 48 hours on set, Rimes says she felt a major shift in her outlook. “I realized I was doing a better job than what I thought I was,” she explains. “In moments like that, you just have to know what’s best and roll with it. If it shifts, it shifts, but somebody’s got to take the reins. I walked in feeling like I couldn’t do it, even though I’m a producer on the film—and then, in the first 48 hours, I was over that. I still find it quite interesting.”
So how did Rimes find herself on the set of a Hallmark holiday movie in the first place? She says when she first met with the network to discuss a collaboration, it felt like a natural step after years of recording Christmas albums. Still, if she was going to star in her own movie—and produce original songs for it—Rimes wasn’t going to do it unless she could “push boundaries.” Hallmark agreed.
The end result of their collaboration: a movie in which Rimes plays Eve, an interim school superintendent who returns to her hometown tasked with ugly assignment of trimming the budget. Emphasis on superintendent—Rimes didn’t want to play the music teacher. Instead, that role went to the male lead (played by Tyler Hines). “I didn’t want to hit it right on the nose,” she says of the switch. “You want to step out of yourself. I get that a lot, where people want me to play a musician. It really takes the right thing.”
While Rimes does sing in the movie, her main goal was to show the importance of arts education programs in schools. “Storylines like music and schools are definitely a big thing and so important,” she says. She knows firsthand—from her own experience and as stepmom to husband Eddie Cibrian’s two sons, ages 11 and 15.
Speaking of her stepsons, that was another storyline that Rimes wanted to highlight in the film. “I thought that there’s not enough light shed upon [stepfamilies] in a positive way, so this was a perfect opportunity to do so.” (In the film, Hines’ character is a single dad to a teenage daughter; Rimes’ character has a stepfather as well.) “I have a wonderful step-dad in real life, so once again, it was nice to pull in the blended family aspect into the film.”
And finally, Rimes wanted her character to be strong and take charge, while Hines’ would have more of an outwardly sweet side. “To have a man in that role, and especially with he and his daughter, I think there’s such strength in showing his softer side,” she says. “There was a beauty to that in our character’s relationship, which is nice.”
PHOTO: Hallmark Channel
Perhaps the only thing that took Hallmark a bit more convincing was Rimes’ wardrobe for her character. “The girls were out,” she jokes of the times she wanted to wear cleavage-baring tops. “There was one moment where I was in pajamas, but I had a full on tank top on and everything was covered and people kept freaking out about it in the other room. I’m like, ‘What are they freaking out about?! It’s covered!’ There’s very specific [guidelines], but they were OK with a little bit lower of a top.”
For Rimes it wasn’t just about the cleavage—it was that she wanted her character to dress like a modern woman. “I didn’t want her to be super stuffy,” she explains. “She had to have a vibe.” Rimes adds that the wardrobe department was incredible and worked with her to make sure each character’s color palette would pop. “That was really important too. There’s so much work that goes into this, but to be able to collaborate from the ground up and create—like I create with music—was so fun.”
Considering this collaboration went so well, Rimes hopes she can do even more with networks like Hallmark. She’d love to see a gay couple or interracial couple in one of her films. “I think they’ll eventually go there,” she says. “The great thing was that [Hallmark] never shut my ideas down. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation.”
Now, as Rimes gets ready to celebrate the holiday season, she has a renewed focus heading into 2019. “It’s so easy to just throw your name on something or step into something because you’re making a significant amount of money doing it,” she says. “But for me, it’s really about moving people and telling stories that come from the heart and aren’t superficial. It’s why I talk about this experience with such great joy.”
It’s Christmas, Eve premieres this Saturday, November 10 at 9:00 P.M. ET on the Hallmark Channel.
