Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: an actress denies a rumor, an actor makes a lifelong commitment, and Blake Lively embraces a new income stream.
What’s Selena Gomez done now? That’s a difficult question I tried to answer this week in a post just for paid subscribers. Catch up on her apparent feud with Zayn Malik, the Hadids, and Zendaya (?) here.
Jennifer Lawrence is back! And having the most successful press tour she has had in years, in my opinion. She is not talking about voting for John McCain in 2008; she is making light of her former relationship with Darren Aronofsky. This is her sweet spot. Also, Jamie Mizrahi is doing her styling now, and she’s putting her in items that are not exclusively Dior, thank God:
The interview that’s getting the most attention during this press tour (for No Hard Feelings) happened this week on Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen. In it, she addressed the rumor that she hooked up with Liam Hemsworth while he was dating Miley Cyrus. For those who don’t remember: Hemsworth and Cyrus dated off and on for ten years after getting together on the set of a Nicholas Sparks movie in 2009. They got engaged and unengaged several times and finally got married in 2018 before divorcing six months later. Did J-Law play a role in any of this dysfunction? It seems Cyrus wants fans to think so: She referenced the divorce in the music video for her last single, “Flowers,” while wearing a gold dress that was kind of similar to one Lawrence wore while promoting The Hunger Games with Hemsworth in 2012. Drama.
Cohen asked Lawrence about the implication that she had a fling with Hemsworth while he was with Cyrus, and Lawrence quickly responded, “Not true, total rumor.” But, she added, “I mean we all know me and Liam kissed one time, but it was years after they broke up, so I just assumed [the video] was a coincidence.” Lawrence previously admitted to kissing Hemsworth during a 2015 appearance on Cohen’s show (this question and the surrounding drama apparently endures).
Does Lawrence’s timeline hold up? Eh, kind of. Based on her previous admission, the “kiss” had to have happened sometime before 2015. Hemsworth and Lawrence started working on the Hunger Games franchise together in 2011. Hemsworth and Cyrus were together for most of that year and got engaged in June 2012, at the ripe old ages of 22 and 19, respectively. They called off their engagement in September 2013 and dated other people before reconciling in 2016.
So there was technically a period of years where Hemsworth and Cyrus were broken up, making Lawrence’s most recent statement plausible. I say: Who cares! Hemsworth and Cyrus couldn’t even stay married for a year. Lawrence, meanwhile, has been with Cooke Maroney since 2018.
Hemsworth, for his part, has never commented on any of this. He is currently on vacation in Mykonos with his brother Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon.
Speaking of marriage, Jon Hamm tied the knot this past weekend with girlfriend Anna Osceola. Everyone is making a big deal about it, because Hamm, 52, never married his ex-girlfriend of several years, Jennifer Westfeldt, and now he’s decided to lock it down with a younger woman (Osceola is 35). Personally, I think this is just the way of the world. Hamm has probably decided he wants kids, after all, and now he is in a position to make that happen. I’m sure we’ll hear some pregnancy rumors before the end of the year.
Hamm sort of addressed his feelings about all of this on Bruce Bozzi’s podcast the week before the wedding. “It’s exciting, it’s exciting because it’s all potential, it’s all possibility, and it’s all positive,” he said. Marriage is “the exciting part of life and it’s a signpost and a signifier of the next chapter and phase. Ideally, it gives you and your partner a sense of stability and comfort and an identifying capacity that is better, deeper, richer, than ‘it's my girlfriend’ or ‘my boyfriend’ or what have you.”
Sure. For the wedding itself, Hamm and Osceola went a little corny: They walked down the aisle at Anderson Canyon in Big Sur, which happens to be where they first met. Hamm filmed the famous final scene of Mad Men there in 2015; Osceola had a bit role as a receptionist at the retreat where Don Draper came up with the idea for that Coke ad. (Hamm was technically still with Westfeldt at the time but whatever.)
According to TMZ, celebrity guests included Tina Fey, John Slattery, Brooke Shields, Paul Rudd, and Billy Crudup, who just got married to Naomi Watts. I bet everyone had a great time.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Apparently, the internet can’t stop talking about Hilary Duff’s $7 aqua blue eyeliner.
Finally, I’ll leave you with the confusing news that self-proclaimed teetotaler Blake Lively has launched a line of canned cocktails:
“Betty Booze” is a followup to her line of nonalcoholic mixers, “Betty Buzz.” I guess there is not as much of a market for celebrity-branded ginger ale as one might have hoped. Best of luck to her with this pivot.
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