John Mellencamp has spent decades perfecting his reputation as one of classic rock’s most uncompromising figureheads, one who’s not afraid to shift into full-blown cantankerousness as needed.
He displayed both qualities during his May 25 concert in Cleveland, warning attendees that he would cut the performance short if they didn’t “shut the fuck up.”
The rocker made a stop at Playhouse Square as part of his ongoing Live and in Person tour, outlining his expectations for the audience well before he hit the stage.
According to Cleveland Scene, the venue posted signs in its lobby that warned, “This show respects theater etiquette.” Following the 30-minute classic movie montage that opened the show, Mellencamp let it be known early in his set that “I don’t like people screaming from the fucking audience.”
Yet that didn’t stop one ticket-holder from shouting at Mellencamp to “play the fucking music” after he reportedly appeared to criticize the United States. That’s when the gloves came off.
“Listen, hey, you guys, if these people don’t shut the fuck up I’m just going to leave, OK?” Mellencamp told the audience. “Because I’m not used to this crap. Look, guys, if I wanted to play in this type of drunken environment, I’d play outside or I’d play in an arena.”
The “Pink Houses” singer issued a similar warning during a March performance in Grand Prairie, Texas, telling the crowd before the midshow acoustic portion, “This is the quiet part, so keep your fucking mouth shut,” according to the Dallas Observer.
When a woman in the audience promptly broke the singer’s rule and shouted his name, Mellencamp fired back, “What did I just fucking say? But thank you.”
Mellencamp launched the Live and in Person tour in early February. The 76-date trek is scheduled to conclude on June 24 in South Bend, Indiana.
He’ll release his 25th album, Orpheus Descending, on June 2. The 71-year-old songwriter pleaded for an end to gun violence on lead single “Hey God” and lamented the homelessness crisis on follow-up single “The Eyes of Portland.”
For 70 years, Queen Elizabeth held one of the most high-profile jobs in the world. While her time in the spotlight was filled with glitz and glamour, it also put her in considerable danger.
In 1970, Elizabeth and Prince Philip had a close call in Australia when their train encountered a log blocking the track. It was later determined that the log’s placement was intentional, rather than accidental.
A decade later, the 1980s were particularly difficult for the monarch, with multiple assassination attempts both at home and abroad.
In 1981, Elizabeth was shot at during her annual birthday parade, Trooping the Colour. Fortunately, the blank cartridges didn’t harm the queen. She had another near-miss when visiting New Zealand that same year.
The 1980s were also fraught due to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Although the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s activities were centered in Northern Ireland, some of the conflict extended into England.
The royal family was also involved when Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle and Elizabeth’s distant cousin, was killed when I.R.A. bombs exploded on his boat in Ireland.
So as the queen and Prince Philip prepared to visit President Ronald Reagan in the U.S. in 1983, law enforcement were on the lookout for possible security risks.
And, according to FBI documents just released via the Freedom of Information Act, a threat was made prior to Elizabeth’s arrival, making them extra wary.
The body of a South American soap star missing since January has been found stuffed in a trunk and buried in the backyard of a Campo Grande, Brazil, home, according to multiple reports.
According to local media outlet R7, the remains of Jefferson Machado were recovered by Brazilian authorities on Monday. The trunk in which the 44-year-old actor’s body was discovered was encased in cement, the outlet reports.
In a statement on Facebook, the Machado family attorney Jairo Magalhae Pereira confirmed the star’s death.
“It is with regret that I share the sad news of the passing of actor Jeff Machado, whose body was found with strangulation signs,” the statement reads. “This discovery confronts us with the cruelty present in our society, motivating us to seek truth and justice in the face of such impactful cases.”
“Preliminary information indicates that the actor’s body was found in a trunk, buried in a hole of considerable depth. This situation deeply saddens us and indignant in the face of the suffering faced by Jeff,” the statement continues.
“My commitment as a lawyer is to seek tirelessly for truth and justice. It is my responsibility to ensure that everyone involved in this brutal crime is held accountable and punished, and that Jeff’s family finds the support they need to get through this very painful time,” the statement adds.
Jeff Machado/Instagram
According to R7, the house where Machado’s body was found was rented by the actor’s friend, who is currently under investigation and has not been publicly identified.
Loved ones first reported Machado missing January 27 after his eight dogs were found alone, per the outlet.
Prior to his disappearance, he starred in the soap opera Reis.
Two young women stride along a New York street, barely breaking step to flash smiles at the camera. One of them is slightly out of focus, but her face — and the face of her friend — is unmistakable. Chillingly so.
The strawberry blonde on the right is Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, the woman alleged this week to have been the former lover of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — as well as an associate and financial beneficiary of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
What makes this photograph sensational, however, is the presence of the flame-haired woman on the left. She is none other than notorious Moscow spy Anna Chapman.
This week, a world exclusive investigation by the Daily Mail has uncovered a potentially disturbing and unexplained link between Gates’s erstwhile Russian ‘lover’ and Kremlin spook Chapman.
While there is no evidence of any wrong-doing on Antonova’s part, it seems to be a connection which raises serious questions for Gates and, of course, for the California-based Russian herself.
Despite repeated approaches this week, it’s still not known whether the 67-year-old Microsoft boss had any knowledge of any potential link between Antonova and Chapman, daughter of a former KGB officer.
Last week, however, Gates’s spokeswoman admitted that paedophile Epstein, who was known to cultivate friendships with the ultra-wealthy in order to exploit them, had ‘tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship’ to threaten the business magnate into doing his bidding.
At the time of his brief ‘relationship’ with Antonova, who is nearly 30 years his junior, father-of-three Gates was still married to his former wife, Melinda.
Registered sex offender Epstein wanted Gates to be an ‘anchor donor’ in a multi- billion dollar global charitable fund he planned to set up, to camouflage his sordid private life, and increase his influence.
The pair had more than half a dozen meetings and Gates once flew on Epstein’s private jet, known as the ‘Lolita Express’. He has since said he regrets meeting with the disgraced billionaire financier, who apparently killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Gates’s spokeswoman has insisted any meetings were ‘solely for philanthropic purposes’. Gates ultimately declined to join Epstein’s charitable fund, and the project did not go ahead.
Even so, the question remains: if Epstein knew about the alleged affair — and later made sure Gates knew that he knew — did he also know about Antonova’s apparent links to Chapman?
Certainly, a relationship between Gates, one of the most influential businessmen on the planet, and a woman who appears to have connections to a Kremlin intelligence agent is troubling.
Chapman, now 41, was among a ring of Russian spies who all carried out long-term, deep-cover assignments across the U.S.
She moved to New York in 2009 from the UK, where she had been issued with a UK passport after marrying a British man.
The FBI finally swooped on her and other Russian SVR (formerly KGB) intelligence agents in June 2010, after this photograph was taken in Manhattan. It captures a smug-looking Chapman gesturing with her hand towards the former Art Deco office block, a stone’s throw from Wall Street, where she kept a luxury apartment.
Her arrest came less than a year after the then 53-year-old Gates had first met Antonova, in the somewhat unlikely setting of the North American Bridge Championship tournament in Washington DC in the summer of 2009. Gates, now a technology adviser to Microsoft and one of its largest shareholders, is a well-known bridge devotee and a regular attendee at the three-times-a-year NABC tournaments.
Antonova, who is now believed to be 39, is also a keen player and has previously claimed that the card game, which she learned while at school in Russia, helped her to focus on her studies.
A professional player who has played with Antonova, described her as an ‘intermediate player, like Gates’. Speaking to the Mail, he added: ‘She was a nice young woman — very keen on bridge and smart. She certainly had an interest in the game and a drive to get better.’
The professional player added that the NABC tournaments were also ‘social events’.
It is not known exactly when the alleged affair between Gates and Antonova began, but in August 2009, just a few weeks after the Washington tournament held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, she appeared to be in a happy frame of mind when she tweeted that she was ‘going to bed and very excited about the future’. Seven months later, in March 2010, the pair were seen together again at the NABC spring tournament in Reno, Nevada.
This week, the Mail discovered a video of Gates made by Antonova during the tournament for her Bridgeunion.com website.
Speaking in heavily accented Russian, she begins by asking him: ‘Who are you?’
The flirtatious smile he gives in return and her off-screen giggles seem to suggest they both find the question amusing.
A couple of months later, on June 9, 2010, Antonova boasted of her connection to Gates at an ‘Ignite NYC’ conference, at which speakers were allowed just five minutes on stage in front of New York’s ‘brightest geeks’ to share their chosen subject. Giving her theme as ‘bridge is a powerful mind game’, she quoted the Hollywood star and acerbic wit Mae West, who had once famously quipped: ‘Good sex is like bridge: if you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.’
The late actress had, Antonova said, ‘found great connection between my two favorite things’.
A video of her confident performance shows the Russian, appearing much younger than her years, her dyed red hair plaited into girlish braids as she repeats that saucy Mae West quote on the stage.
She also name-drops Gates along with his close friend and sometime bridge partner, billionaire industrialist Warren Buffett, claiming the pair are ‘very avid players’ who’d ‘donated a million dollars to promote bridge at schools’. It’s worth noting that in 2009 Antonova had set up her own, and now defunct, organization, Bridge Union, to do just that — promote the game among deprived schoolchildren.
It’s perhaps worth noting, too, that Anna Chapman also claimed to have worked for Buffett when she was living in New York.
During her speech, an image of Antonova and Gates appears on a screen beside her. She tells the audience: ‘Two years ago, I said, ‘Everyone, I’m going to meet this guy’,’ suggesting that her meeting with the billionaire was premeditated.
She adds: ‘No one believed me. Last year, I played against him at the same table at the National Bridge Tournament in Washington DC. I didn’t beat him, but I tried to kick him with my leg.’
Antonova also said that she came to New York in 2006 —although she didn’t say why or how — barely speaking English, and had supported herself after she arrived.
Little is known about her early life in Russia. She attended university between 2000 and 2005 and studied at the Togliatti Institute of Management on the banks of the river Volga in the Samara region, south-east of Moscow.
The institution claims its mission is to train students who have a ‘heightened sense of responsibility to their people and the state for the worthy future of the country’.
The Mail has also discovered that before the alleged affair with Gates, Antonova had already forged an association with another wealthy, successful older man — the award-winning film director Chad Gracia whose debut film, The Russian Woodpecker, won a prize in 2015 at the renowned Sundance Film Festival.
In June 2009 — a month before Antonova met Bill Gates — Gracia posted photographs on his Facebook page of Antonova in a wetsuit, standing on Brighton Beach, a predominantly Russian enclave of New York.
Undated, posed professional photographs from a wedding in Brooklyn also include shots of Antonova sitting on Gracia’s knee, his arm around her waist. They appear in the background of another shot of the entire wedding party taken during the evening reception. Antonova appears to be on Gracia’s knee again.
She and Gracia were registered as living at the same address in New York and worked for the same company, public records show.
Gracia was the founder of Tipzu, a company which allowed people to launch and manage e-commerce sites based on their hobbies or interests.
According to Antonova’s LinkedIn profile, she was a bookkeeper there in 2008.
The company was based at a luxury apartment in Manhattan, and Antonova also lived at the same address, public records show.
Another old address for Antonova was a Manhattan apartment which now costs $11,500 a month to rent.
Based in Kyiv before the Russian invasion, aside from his film and theatre work Gracia describes himself as a U.S.-registered securities broker who has worked with the Saudi royal family and has raised more than $1.5 billion for his clients.
On his company website, he also claims to have worked with U.S. secret service agencies after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in September 2001. Gracia did not respond to email and phone messages from this newspaper this week.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where he studied Russian literature and history, 53-year-old Gracia is currently finalizing a film called Sex In The Soviet Union, described as ‘a powerful examination of the roots of Russia’s toxic sexual culture that helps understand the current invasion of Ukraine’.
In a 2017 interview with a Ukrainian magazine, Gracia said he started to research his latest film after unsubstantiated rumors emerged of the existence of a Russian ‘kompromat’ sex tape, featuring former U.S. President Donald Trump in a Moscow hotel with several prostitutes.
‘I started to research could it be possible and I discovered that starting from the Sixties there was a serious large-scale program to find young boys and girls — ‘Swallows and Ravens’ they were called — and recruit them into the KGB. First they had to train them in sex,’ he said.
He detailed how recruits were taught using pornography: ‘They had these students watch people have sex and then they themselves had to have sex with other students or visiting army cadets.’
It is not known how long Gates’s alleged affair with Antonova lasted. It came to light following a leak of records kept by Epstein to the Wall Street Journal.
Officials unravelling his complex finances and sex trafficking ring are focusing on wealthy individuals with whom the disgraced financier may have done business.
According to the WSJ, Epstein met Antonova when she was looking for funding to start an online business teaching people how to play bridge. Documents seen by the WSJ are said to reveal that they were introduced by Croatian-born Boris Nikolic, a Gates confidant and science adviser.
They met at Epstein’s townhouse in November 2013, where Antonova set out her proposal, asking for $500,000 for her ‘BridgePlanet’ project.
Documents seen by the WSJ show that Epstein gave feedback, and on November 9 Antonova emailed him to thank him for the meeting. Ultimately he didn’t invest.
But the following year, in November 2014, Antonova stayed briefly at a New York apartment provided by Epstein. Last week she told the WSJ that she ‘didn’t interact with him or with anyone else while there’.
She added: ‘I had no idea that he was a criminal or had any ulterior motive. I just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help. I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did.’
After failing to secure funding for her project, she said she decided to become a software programmer and asked several people, including Epstein, to lend her money for a U.S. programming boot camp called Hack Reactor.
‘Epstein agreed to pay, and he paid directly to the school,’ she told the WSJ.
‘Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that. When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.’
In 2017, years after Gates’s alleged relationship with Antonova had ended, Epstein allegedly emailed Gates asking him to reimburse him for the cost of her programming school fees.
Given that both men were billionaires, the sum involved was immaterial. According to the WSJ, ‘the tone of the message was that Epstein knew about the affair and could expose it’.
For decades, Epstein and his British girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell wooed the rich and the powerful, entertaining them at homes in New York, Florida and New Mexico as well as at Epstein’s 75-acre private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, nicknamed Little St Jeff by locals, which was a perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sex.
He installed cameras in his properties, recording sex tapes he could later use to blackmail his rich and powerful friends.
Since his death, there have been several claims that Epstein was also in the pay of Russian secret services.
Epstein was placed on the New York sex offenders’ register in 2008 after pleading guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution — with a warning that he was at high risk of re-offending.
He was arrested in July 2019 on charges of child sex trafficking, prompting dozens of his victims to come forward with claims of sexual abuse against him.
He died in his jail cell a month later in an apparent suicide, leaving behind a little black book full of contacts for politicians, celebrities and wealthy people and a trail of sex videos and documents.
A Wall Street Journal investigation earlier this month revealed that names uncovered in those documents included film director Woody Allen, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and author and political activist Noam Chomsky. Other associates include former U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, who both deny knowing about Epstein’s criminal activities.
Last year, Prince Andrew settled a sex assault case against him filed by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed to have been trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell. He agreed to pay her around £12 million.
British intelligence chiefs have already expressed concern that Russia may have obtained ‘kompromat’ on Prince Andrew over the Epstein scandal.
Ghislaine Maxwell is now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, but the truth about Epstein continues to emerge.
Attempts to contact Mr Nikolic for comment were unsuccessful. However, he has previously said that he deeply regrets meeting Epstein, knew nothing about his sexual activities with young women and described his crimes as ‘despicable’.
Nikolic was named as the third executor of Epstein’s estate after his death, but he refused to fulfil his duties, saying he had known nothing about the businessman’s will and suspected his name had been included as a retaliatory gesture against Gates.
Once regarded as the face of global philanthropy, Gates’s formerly geekish image has undergone something of a sea change in recent years.
Married to Melinda French Gates for 27 years, the couple made the shock announcement that they were splitting two years ago, allegedly over his infidelity and his association with Epstein.
In the wake of that announcement came reports of a rather racier side to the tech tycoon.
As a student, one biographer claimed, he was a frequent visitor to Boston’s notorious ‘Combat Zone’, an area famous for its many strip clubs, peep shows, X-rated cinemas and adult bookstores.
And during the early days of Microsoft, he was said to have hired dancers to come to his lakeside home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool.
It is not clear if 58-year-old Melinda knew of her husband’s alleged affair with Antonova when she divorced him. She later said in an interview that she had warned Gates that Epstein was ‘evil personified’, but that her then husband still met with him.
In recent years, Gates has attempted to minimize his ties to Epstein, saying that it was ‘a huge mistake to spend time with him’.
Whether or not he regrets his alleged affair with Antonova, is another matter entirely.
That alleged relationship, Antonova’s links to Epstein and, above all, her apparent links to the spy Anna Chapman, add another tangled layer to this whole sorry saga.
And at a time when Russia is at loggerheads with both the U.S. and the UK, the connection will inevitably reignite concerns about attempts by Russian security services to infiltrate the ranks of the rich and powerful in the West.
Whoopi Goldberg shouted down the in-studio audience of The View on Thursday for jeering New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu over his pro-gun stance, telling the crowd “no booing” while explaining that all guests should be treated with respect.
Sununu, who is mulling a 2024 White House run as a moderate Republican, appeared on the ABC talk show to hype up his potential presidential bid and was pressed by the mostly liberal panel on issues such as abortion and gun violence. Toward the end of the interview, co-host Sunny Hostin grilled the governor on his reluctance to back an assault-weapons ban in light of the surge of American mass shootings.
“If your argument is, if we have more gun laws, Chicago would be the safest place in the country,” Sununu began to respond, before Hostin pushed back: “But the problem with that argument, the guns that are used in Chicago are coming from states that have looser gun laws.”
The New Hampshire governor went on to criticize Democrats for not passing more gun restrictions when they recently controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House before boasting that he has “the safest state in the country.” He then said that mental-health access should be the main focus when dealing with mass shootings.
Shifting the discussion back to assault-style rifles, the weapon of choice for most mass shooters, Goldberg asked Sununu why he is “holding on to one gun” and not willing to ban AR-15s.
“Again, if that was easy, the Democrats would have done it. They didn’t do it because—,” the governor retorted, prompting host Joy Behar to interject.
“Forget about the Democrats, what are you going to do?” Behar wondered.
“Again, I’m not banning any guns. I’m going to provide access to mental health. We’ll get at the core of the issue,” the governor replied, prompting audible groans and boos from the studio audience.
“Stop! Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, no,” Goldberg quickly reacted while waving her finger. “No, no, no. No, no. No! No booing!”
Behar also chimed in, adding that “no Republican will ever come back here if you’re gonna boo” as Goldberg continued to lecture the audience.
“You know, we need to talk to people to find out what they’re thinking and are they thinking in the right way,” the Oscar-winning actress concluded. “He’s not going to be perfect. None of them are. At least give people the opportunity to say what’s going on.”
Goldberg scolding the View audience on decorum echoed a similar moment last fall when the longtime host shut down a chorus of climate activists who repeatedly heckled Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during an off-the-rails interview.
“Excuse me. Excuse me, ladies! Excuse us,” Goldberg yelled at the demonstrators. “Let us do our job. Let us do our job. We hear what you have to say, but you gotta go! You gotta go! You got to let us do our job!”
In an unexpected plot twist, Woody Allen recently saved a man’s life by performing the Heimlich maneuver at a buzzy New York restaurant.
The filmmaker jumped into action and performed the maneuver on his friend Andrew Stein at their favorite Upper East Side Italian eatery, Caravaggio.
In a remarkable act, the 87-year-old Oscar winner leapt from his seat and grabbed Stein, 76, as he began choking on a piece of pork.
While their dinner companions — famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Allen’s wife, Soon-Yi Previn— looked on in horror, Stein, who was New York City Council President from 1986 until 1994, turned red and struggled to breathe.
That’s when the five-foot-five “Annie Hall” director applied the life-saving maneuver with surprising strength and vigor, according to witnesses in the restaurant on May 16.
“I am embarrassed to say it, but Woody actually saved my life,” Stein told Page Six. “I normally order fish, but this time I went for the pork, and soon after we started to eat, a piece of the meat became lodged in my throat and I was struggling to breathe.Enlarge ImageAllen with a member of staff at his favorite eatery Caravaggio on the Upper East Side.caravaggioristorante/Instagram
“I started to panic. I was terrified. And then Woody came to my rescue.
“It really was like a scene from one of his movies. If it wasn’t for his quick thinking, I fear I may have died. I owe him my life.”
This isn’t the first time Allen has saved a life. In 1992, he rescued his dining companion, former “Saturday Night Live” producer Jean Doumanian, when she began choking on a piece of bread at clubby Second Avenue restaurant Primola.
The move was even reported on the front page of the New York Post at the time, and Doumainian said his actions “sealed” that they became lifelong friends. Until they later ended up suing each other.
In his book “Side Effects,” a collection of essays written between 1975 and 1980, Allen even tried to imagine the origin of the Heimlich maneuver, albeit in a slightly creepy way.
He pictured someone putting his arms around an attractive woman and hugging her, only she happened to be choking on a piece of herring at the time.
“He hopes … that someday we will live in a world where no man, woman, or child will be overcome by his own main course,” Allen wrote.
Stein’s father, Jerry Finkelstein, was the wealthy publisher of the “New York Law Journal,” but Stein shortened his name when he entered politics. His brother is Jimmy Finkelstein, who was part owner of The Hollywood Reporter and The Hill and is also the founder of the news site The Messenger.
In 2010, Stein pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor tax evasion charge, admitting he failed to pay more than $1 million in income tax in 2008, and was sentenced to 500 hours of community service.
Yet longtime Democrat Stein has remained active in the political and New York social scene, and recently revealed to The Post in an op-ed with Dershowitz that he now plans to vote Republican.
Legendary singer Tina Turner, the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a 12-time Grammy winner and one of the best-selling female artists in music history, passed away peacefully at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, at the age of 83, her representative told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Although her cause of death has not yet been released, Turner struggled in recent years with intestinal cancer and received a kidney transplant in 2017.
To say that Turner was an audaciously charismatic performer who exuded raw sensuality would be an understatement—she was the embodiment of maximalist, unapologetically feminine power.
When she strutted through the ’80s, trailing huge hits like “Better Be Good to Me,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “The Best,” her hair teased sky-high, and lips painted ruby red, her addictive music videos were so beloved that Turner essentially became synonymous with MTV.
Born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, the singer first started attracting attention in high school as a performer alongside Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, his band.
In the ’60s and ’70s, Ike Turner would go on to become Tina Turner’s husband, and her music partner, in the prolific Ike & Tina Turner duo.
But his vicious abuse of Turner, which she first divulged in a groundbreaking People magazine interview in 1981, was heinous to the extent that it shadowed the rest of her life, a fact that Turner was radically open about.
Throughout her life, in fact, Tina Turner was remarkably open about the pain she suffered as a result of childhood trauma, her abusive marriage to Turner, the pressures of stardom, and the loss of her son to suicide in 2018.
Turner’s mother “didn’t love me,” she told Rolling Stone in 1986, and “never believed in me,” Turner later told Oprah Winfrey. “She never wanted this child and when this child grew up to be successful and creative, she didn’t accept it because it was something she didn’t want.”
It wasn’t until the 2021 HBO documentary Tina, however, that Turner shared her most striking insights.
Turner met and fell in love with her beloved second husband, record producer Erwin Bach, when she was 46, subsequently relocating to Switzerland in 1995 with her partner, later relinquishing her U.S. citizenship altogether.
In leaving the United States for good, Turner freed herself from the country that made her a star but was also the site of her awful years with Turner, a man who, according to her memoir, forced her to visit a brothel on their wedding night, poured scalding coffee on her face and beat her to the point of breaking her jaw and nose.
“Some people say the life that I lived and the performances that I gave, the appreciation, is lasting with the people. And yeah, I should be proud of that. I am,” Turner said in Tina. “But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when do you, how do you bow out slowly? Just go away?”
Survivors of systemic abuse are often made to feel as though their stories are only palatable if they end happily and neatly. Turner, with a historic career under her belt and a loving husband at her side in Switzerland, could have wrapped things in a nice bow in her documentary to make everybody feel better about everything she went through.
But that’s not who she was.
“It wasn’t a good life,” Tina Turner said in the documentary. “The good did not balance the bad. I had an abusive life, there’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you’ve got, so you have to accept it.”
It was this radical honesty that made her a star. Turner’s inability to bullshit about the tragedy she experienced gave her a shot at enjoying the happiness that she did carve out for herself, with all the grace and appetite for life that make her so adored.
Royal protocol covers every facet of life, from the moment a royal wakes to the moment they sleep, there’s a protocol in place to guide how they should properly do it, at least in the UK.
And there’s also one sometimes-spoken (but more often unspoken) rule: don’t overshadow the reigning monarch.
But someone seems to have neglected to inform Prince William and Kate Middleton of this fact. Or perhaps they don’t care.
Middleton recently risked King Charles and Queen Camilla’s ire with a simple public appearance – one that took attention away from the reigning monarch’s plans.
On Monday, Middleton made what seemed like a simple (uncomplicated) visit to the Chelsea Flower Show.
But there’s just one problem: the King and Queen had plans to visit too.
King Charles and Queen consort Camilla visited earlier in the day, but their appearance received less media coverage and attention than they planned for.
GBNews reports, “A royal insider has shared his disappointment at the lack of reporting on the King’s engagement.
An insider told the Daily Mail: ‘With his love of horticulture, His Majesty’s appearance at Chelsea was an important engagement.
‘It’s a shame that his visit with Her Majesty the Queen received less coverage than might have been expected.’
‘I hope they are not too disappointed.’
Royal sources have expressed concern that the King and Queen’s visit was overshadowed by a surprise appearance from the Princess of Wales.”
If you believe black sheep of the family, Prince Harry, this is an ongoing problem. There are apparently protocols in place to ensure that William and Kate don’t make appearances that overshadow the King and Queen.
In his autobiography, Spare, Prince Harry wrote, “Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They’d openly scolded Willy about it many times.”
In his book, Prince Harry referred to one particular occasion which raised the King’s ire.
On that day, Kate was scheduled to appear at an engagement at a tennis club. This engagement was planned on the same day that Charles and Camilla were due to appear elsewhere at an official event.
Prince Harry claimed that this had been strictly prohibited. It was expected that Kate’s day out would ruin Charles and Camilla’s chances of being on the front page of the papers the following day.
Harry wrote in his book, “That couldn’t be tolerated. Told that it was too late to cancel the visit, Pa’s press officer warned: ‘Just make sure the Duchess doesn’t hold a tennis racquet in any of the photos’.”
So was Middleton scolded for her seemingly harmless appearance at the Chelsea Flower Show?
Without Harry on the inside to spill the tea, it’s unlikely if the public will ever know.
But given what we know about the King and Queen’s feelings about being overshadowed, it seems likely that she received at least a mild scolding.
Online, some people are referring to Charles’ preferences around Kate’s appearances “childish and petty,” but as the King, he gets to make the calls.
Middleton will just have to be careful not to shine too brightly – something she may find difficult to manage.
Original Article – Rita Wilson has explained what actually happened after her and Tom Hanks were pictured having a seemingly heated exchange with a member of staff at the Cannes Film Festival.
The couple attended the premiere for their new film Asteroid City on Tuesday, but didn’t look happy as they spoke to the festival worker.
Tom seemed frustrated as he pointed as finger, while Rota held her hands up while speaking to the man on the red carpet.
However, she has now taken to Instagram to set the record straight and insisted they had a “great time” at the glitzy event.
Sharing a picture of the exchange, Rita wrote: “This is called I can’t hear you. People are screaming. What did you say? Where are we supposed to go?
“But that doesn’t sell stories!”
She added: “We had a great time! Go and see Asteroid City!”
After finally figuring out where they were supposed to go, Tom and Rita were all smiles as they posed for the cameras.
Tom looked dapper wearing a black tuxedo and matching bow tie, completing his look with a crisp white shirt.
Rita looked especially glamorous wearing a black dress adorned with silver jewels which sparkled in the lights.
She also opted for a long black cloak which trailed behind her and accessorized her look with some simple silver earrings.
Rita also decided on a glamorous makeup look, complete with a nude lipstick, and pulled her hair back into an elegant up-do.
The couple both star in the upcoming film Asteroid City, which is directed by Wes Anderson.
The film is set in a fictional desert town and tells the story of stargazing in the desert.
At the center of the story is widower Augie Steenbeck, played by long-time Wes Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman.
The cast also includes performances from stars such as Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson and Maya Hawke.
Original Article – Known for his many antihero roles, Dustin Hoffman is one of the most prominent actors to emerge from modern Hollywood.
Despite having a flawless acting record and brilliant roles that upheld his legacy, he was also the subject of several scandals.
Although his altercation with Meryl Streep is well-known, he had been once accused of sexual assault by several others.
In an exclusive article on his sexual assault charges published by Variety in 2017, a woman alleged that the actor made her feel uncomfortable by flashing her when she was a teenager.
This occurrence sparked renewed interest in Meryl Streep’s nearly four-decade-old claim that her ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ co-star introduced himself by touching her inappropriately.
According to the Variety article, Hoffman allegedly flashed himself to a teenage girl in the 1980s. The Oscar-winning actor was charged with inappropriate behavior in a New York hotel room, which the playwright Cori Thomas claimed left her traumatized.
In 1980, Thomas, 16 at the time, was Karina Hoffman’s high school classmate at the United Nations International School in New York.
Thomas told Variety that she had gone to lunch with the father and daughter at Jim McMullin’s on the Upper East Side and visited bookstores with them.
She exclaimed at the time, “This was at first one of the greatest days of my life. One of my idols was spending time with me and talking with me respectfully.”
Her parents were meant to pick her up from the restaurant, but Thomas, an aspiring actress at the time, alleged that Hoffman proposed they leave a note asking her parents to pick her up from his hotel instead.
Thomas went on to say that the three went to Hoffman’s hotel room on the top floor, but shortly after, “either Karina or Dustin suggested that [Karina] should go home because it was a school night and she had homework. So she left, and I was left in the hotel room with him alone.”
Thomas claimed that Hoffman went to the bathroom not long after Karina left. After some time, “he came out of the bathroom with a towel at first wrapped around him, which he dropped,”
Thomas recalled. “He was standing there naked. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked man. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do. And he milked it. He milked the fact that he was naked. He stood there. He took his time.”
Hoffman reportedly put on his robe at last, but he then requested a foot massage from Thomas. She complied since she was a confused and naive teenager. He kept telling her, “I’m naked, Do you want to see?” while she continued massaging him.
Thomas, a famous playwright, and mother of one, claimed in 2017 that it wasn’t until seven years after the event that she felt ready to discuss what had happened.
She never revealed to Hoffman’s daughter Karina, until her revelation to Variety, who remained a close friend.
According to an interview with the New York Times, Hoffman allegedly grabbed Meryl Streep by her breast when they met for the first time on the set of ‘Kramer vs. Kramer.’
Streep recalled, “He came up to me and said, ‘I’m Dustin — burp — Hoffman,’ and he put his hand on my breast.” She further claimed that her co-star “just slapped [her]” during the filming of a particular scene, despite the fact that it was the very first take.
“And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping,” Streep said at the time.
The interview was “not an accurate rendering of that meeting,” a spokesman for Streep later claimed to E! News, adding that “there was an offense and it is something for which Dustin apologized. And Meryl accepted that.”
