Everyone just forgets about Zach Braff
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: Miss Flo should be thanking Olivia Wilde, Gisele Bündchen should be divorcing Tom Brady, and Meghan Markle should be praying she can release the remaining episodes of her podcast.
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The Don’t Worry Darling premiere at the Venice film festival was a thrilling disaster. There were sunglasses and spit and a person called Granzo Pat and absolutely NO EYE CONTACT between director Olivia Wilde and star Florence Pugh. Wilde, 38, has tried to paper over the drama by giving two nearly identical interviews to Variety and Vanity Fair about the project, but her rehearsed lines about feminism and how gossip tears women down are not fooling anyone.
(I’m serious, her quotes in each are eerily similar. Just one example: When discussing how her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis served her custody papers while she was on stage at CinemaCon in April — which we don’t even have time to get into right now — she told Variety, “Sadly, it was not something that was entirely surprising to me. I mean, there’s a reason I left that relationship.” In the same context, she told Vanity Fair, “Unfortunately, I wasn’t that shocked. There’s a reason that I didn’t stay in that relationship.” She could have at least told one of them the reason!)
As much as Wilde has tried to insist that everything with DWD is fine, it’s clear that Pugh, 26, has been pissed at her since she started dating Harry Styles on set (there are rumors that Wilde was so distracted by this new relationship that Pugh and director of photography Matthew Libatique were forced to step in and “ghost direct” certain scenes). And it’s clear that Pugh got even more pissed when Shia LaBeouf, who was replaced by Styles in the film, leaked a video of Wilde calling Pugh “Miss Flo” while begging him to rejoin the cast. Pugh refused to comment for any of Wilde’s cover stories, skipped the press portion of the Venice premiere, and then took a photo of her stylists wearing newly branded t-shirts that say “Miss Flo.”
What I think Pugh should consider is that Wilde has actually given her a beautiful gift with this disaster of a movie. Everyone has been so caught up following the DWD drama that they have forgotten that up until a month ago, Pugh was dating a 47-year-old man named Zach Braff.
That information was simply wiped from your brain, wasn’t it? We’ve spent so much time analyzing a video of Styles possibly spitting on Chris Pine that the memory of Pugh’s four-year relationship with the guy from Scrubs has escaped our consciousness.
The fact that Pugh and Braff started dating after he went on a like-spree on her Instagram when she was 22 — gone. The time an Instagram commenter reminded Braff, “You’re 44 years old,” and Pugh responded, “And yet he got it” — erased. This photo of Braff making a kissy face at Pugh during a shopping trip last fall — completely blocked out, and of course I’m so sorry for reprinting it here.
In a way, Wilde has done Pugh a big favor. If the press didn’t have this feud to focus on, they would be asking Pugh to comment on her recent breakup, and everyone would be forced to remember this silly little relationship. Instead, Wilde has given Pugh an excellent reason to avoid the media altogether. And sometime soon, Wilde is going to have to announce and/or leak that she and Styles have broken up, and then everyone will be talking about that. It’s all coming up Flo.
Speaking of breakups, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen are going to get a divorce (just my opinion). Split rumors have been flying since last week, when the 45-year-old unretired quarterback missed several days of training for unspecified family issues and the 42-year-old supermodel reportedly absconded to Costa Rica. Now, I’m convinced they are headed to divorce court, based on how many fawning articles People has published about them without mentioning any hint of discord.
In the hierarchy of tabloids, People sits at the top, because its editors almost never print anything that hasn’t been dictated by a celebrity publicist. As such, it is the go-to outlet for an A-list divorce announcement, and it remains that way because the editors will wait until the exact moment stars are ready to reveal their separation plans to the public. Back in 2015, when it was abundantly clear that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were going to divorce, People spent weeks publishing cheery article after cheery article about how everything was fine up until the point Affleck and Garner released a joint statement. Now, it seems that the tabloid is doing the same with Brady and Bündchen.
In the last week, People has published sourced reports about Bündchen taking the kids to a water park, where she “looked gorgeous in a one-piece black bathing suit,” and Brady visiting his son’s football practice, where she showed he’s “such a sweet dad.”
Only yesterday did the tabloid start to acknowledge something may be amiss, with a vague story about how “nothing is in place” for Bündchen to attend Brady’s first game with the Buccaneers on Sunday. I’d expect the divorce announcement sometime before the Super Bowl.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Hilary Duff is hard at work on set this week.
Finally, I’d like to send all my positive thoughts to Meghan Markle, who was reportedly disinvited from visiting the Queen on her deathbed. This is a difficult time made all the more upsetting by the fact that she is right in the middle of her inaugural podcast season. I hope we get those remaining episodes soon.
Thanks so much for opening this email. If you have a friend who likes celebrity gossip, why not forward it to them? And if you’d like to sign up for a paid subscription, you can do that here. As always, feel free to share your thoughts and theories in the comments or by replying directly.
So glad to have you back Allie!
I will NEVER forget about the Braff years.