Jessica Simpson's movie-star affair
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Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: a former pop star shares the perfect blind item, a former talk show host renews her vows, and Reese Witherspoon makes a bold fashion choice.
This week, paid subscribers got an in-depth look at Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde’s “friendly” custody battle. You can subscribe to read that here.
It’s been two years since Jessica Simpson dropped one of the greatest celebrity memoirs of all time, Open Book. There was so much gossip in it — regarding her “emotional affair” with Johnny Knoxville, the absolutely haunted John Mayer years, etc — that it’s hard to believe she held much back. But this week, she released an essay from the cutting room floor in the form of an “Amazon Original Story” titled “Movie Star: They Always Say They’re Single.” This is probably part of some kind of contractual obligation to promote her forthcoming Amazon Freevee show, but I don’t care. It’s good!
The topic, as you may have guessed, is an affair Simpson had with an unnamed (but pretty transparently described) movie star around the year 2006. Simpson worked with her Open Book ghostwriter, Kevin O’Carr Leary, on the story, so the prose will be familiar to anyone who read the memoir. She describes meeting a movie star at the 2001 VMAs (key detail #1) who she grew up thinking was “so hot” (key detail #2) via her bodyguard/personal trainer who was friendly with him (key detail #3). “Movie Star started on small talk, and as he leaned in, I had the presence of mind to know, Oh, this is what it’s like to be hit on,” she writes. According to Simpson, he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans to the event (key detail #4).
Simpson was on a break from her soon-to-be husband Nick Lachey at the time, but she iconically got back together with him after he called her to reconcile on 9/11, so nothing happened with Movie Star in 2001. When she separated from Lachey in 2005, however, she writes that she reconnected with Movie Star. He had a girlfriend (key detail #5), but he kept assuring her that that relationship was over and telling her his “spiritual advisor” was in favor of him dating Simpson (key detail #6). Simpson writes that she and Movie Star made out a lot, and that he eventually convinced her to fly with his entourage (key detail #7) to hang out with him on a film that was shooting in the New York area (key detail #8). The movie’s very famous director (key detail #9) supposedly even approved the visit. But after Simpson got to set, she writes that she couldn’t go through with sleeping with Movie Star, because Movie Star very obviously still had the same girlfriend. She left, and that was that.
Either Movie Star is Mark Wahlberg, or Simpson just really wants us to think it’s Mark Wahlberg, for some reason. All the details add up: He was at the 2001 VMAs, and he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Simpson, 42, would have grown up seeing Wahlberg, 51, in Calvin Klein ads and thinking he was hot. Given what we know about his personal life — he is a Catholic and obsessed with working out at 3:30 in the morning — it makes sense that he would be friendly with both a bodyguard and a spiritual advisor (a.k.a priest). He famously had an entourage, leading to the creation of the HBO drama Entourage. And around 2005-2006, he was filming The Departed, directed by Martin Scorcese, in and around the New York area. Oh, and he’s had the same girlfriend since 2001: Rhea Durham. Wahlberg and Durham were on-and-off until they got married in 2009. (They also had three kids together before they tied the knot; it’s possible Durham was pregnant with their third when Wahlberg was allegedly carrying on with Simpson.)
Others have suggested that Movie Star could be Liev Schreiber or Leonardo DiCaprio, but neither fits the bill as well as Marky Mark. I am so thankful to Simpson for creating such a satisfying blind item, and my hope is that Durham already knew about this and is not getting the shock of her life via an Amazon Original Story.
Speaking of commitments, Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi renewed their vows this week after 15 years of marriage. Kris Jenner officiated, Brandi Carlisle performed, and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were in the audience. That’s Montecito for you. Unfortunately, big celebrity vow renewals almost always precede big celebrity divorces, so I hope Degeneres and de Rossi have their finances in order.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz are still dealing with drama related to their $3.5 million Palm Beach wedding last April. This week, news broke that Peltz’s billionaire father Nelson Peltz is suing two of the couple’s wedding planners in order to get back a $159,000 deposit they allegedly kept after Nelson fired them. According to the lawsuit, the poor souls were the Peltz-Beckhams’ second wedding-planning team (of three total) and were fired within nine days. As part of the filing, Nicola submitted some of her texts with the planners, in which she snaps at them for screwing up Lewis Hamilton’s RSVP. The lawsuit also refers to her as a “world-famous actress.” Okay!
I’m not sure why Nelson is going after $159,000 right now when he’s in the midst of a much bigger fight to land a seat on the board of Disney. Maybe he’s running out of cash?
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Hilary Duff’s cozy zip-up sweater is a practical choice for getting ready in the morning.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this photo of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher at last night’s premiere of their new Netflix romcom:
Are peplums back???
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My mom gossip group (niche?) somehow solved this CONUNDRUM for the AGES within minutes but I'm relieved and overjoyed to see the Official Gossip Time corroboration!!!!
a real juicy one today!
reese looks amazing but there is no light in ashton’s eyes. sad