Natalie Portman and Paul Mescal
It's Gossip Time!
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: two actors walk into a bar, three children of celebrities change their names, and Hailey Bieber wins again.
Also this week: Paid subscribers got a look at Mary-Kate Olsen’s new (bad) boyfriend. Click here to catch up!
This time last year, the French tabloid Voici broke the news that Natalie Portman’s ballerino husband Benjamin Millepied cheated on her with a 25-year-old French climate activist named Camille Étienne. Portman, 42, made no public comment about the alleged affair, but we now know that she swiftly filed for divorce in France. The divorce was finalized in March, and Portman made no public comment about that either, but she allowed her “friends” to tell People how she was doing. (Great, thanks.) She also chose Heartburn by Nora Ephron for her book club in March. But perhaps most telling is the fact that she somewhat recently followed two Instagram accounts dedicated to healing after a relationship with a narcissist:
Incroyable.
We haven’t heard about her dating anyone new, but this week, the Daily Mail published a simply electric photoset of her enjoying a cigarette outside a bar in London with fellow actor Paul Mescal.
Portman and Mescal, 28, were friendly before this: They were paired together for last year’s “Actors on Actors” feature in Variety, where they were very cute and complimentary of each other. Mescal also starred in Millepied’s directorial debut, a reimagining of Carmen, that premiered at the TIFF in 2022 and then kinda went nowhere. (Portman and Mescal did not discuss this particular film for Variety.)
These photos, taken outside Bar 69 in Islington, a posh borough of London, look a bit more than friendly, though. The Daily Mail described Portman as “giddy” and Mescal as “delighted,” which sounds accurate to me.
As far as we know, Mescal is single: He reportedly broke off his engagement to Phoebe Bridgers at the end of 2022 after she took up with Bo Burnham.
Why were Portman and Mescal in London together? Well, Mescal lives there at least part of the time. Initially, the Daily Mail reported that Portman was in town filming Guy Ritchie’s latest, Fountain of Youth, but that detail has since been deleted from the story. Hmmm. According to the Liverpool Echo, however, Portman was spotted filming in Liverpool two weeks ago.
A source (Portman’s publicist) told People this morning that Portman and Mescal are “just friends.” We’ll see about that.
Back in January 2023, photos of Mescal hanging out with another older actress, Angelina Jolie, surfaced online. At first, the tabloids suggested that meeting, which took place at a cafe in London, was romantic, but sources quickly revealed to the tabloids that Jolie’s daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt was there too, and that it was more of a fan meeting after Shiloh and Angie saw Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire.
I mention this incident because Shiloh made headlines again this week for filing to change her legal name to Shiloh Jolie on the day of her 18th birthday. This comes after Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, 15, who has been working as a production assistant on Broadway’s The Outsiders (sure, whatever!) chose to list her name in the Playbill as Vivienne Jolie. And Jolie’s oldest daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt, 19, reportedly now goes by Zahara Marley Jolie, though it’s not clear if she has legally made the change.
What’s up with Brad Pitt, then? He continues to fight Jolie in court over the sale of Chateau Miraval — Pitt’s lawyers just bragged to Page Six last week that Pitt has won another piecemeal victory in this case — but it seems he has basically given up on getting custody of any of his children. I wrote a longer explainer on the state of Jolie and Pitt’s divorce case earlier this month for The Cut if you are interested in the details, but in brief: All of Jolie and Pitt’s six children are at an age now where they can decide which parent they want to spend time with. These public name changes indicate that most of them have made their choice.
Pitt has even tacitly acknowledged the fact that he does not have great relationships with his children via tabloid source quotes like this one in People earlier this month: “The long-drawn drama with Angelina used to really get to him, especially the custody drama and abuse allegations. It's been very stressful for him to have to defend over and over again. But since things don't seem to change, he's trying to move on with his life.”
According to People, “moving on with his life” means filming a new movie with George Clooney and spending lots of time with his girlfriend Ines de Ramon, who is either 29 or 34, depending on whom you ask. Sounds good, man.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Hilary Duff got out of the house for a quick, casual pap stroll three weeks after giving birth. I am in awe.
Finally, I’ll leave you with the news that Hailey Bieber got a new $1.5 million engagement ring in honor of her vow renewal with Justin Bieber:
According to jewelers who talked to Page Six, the new rock is 18 carats — three times the size of her original six-carat engagement ring, which she is now wearing on her pinky finger. Jeweler Laura Taylor speculated that Hailey may have made the switch because her fingers are swollen due to pregnancy. When my ring stopped fitting in the third trimester, I just took a break from wearing it — why didn’t I think to get a $1.5 million upgrade???
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Nothing has stopped me in my tracks like these very cute and a little sexy Paul/Natalie pics!!! The cigarettes, the flirtatious smiles, his RED EARS. I love it all
Allie, what you do is a public service.
After reading the Vanity Fair piece on the history of Miraval and the unravelling of Jolie/Pitt, it's been hard to see the situation any which way except that their respective childhood trauma's got the better of them long term and then Brad got violent. It's all sad sad sad.
Re: Bieber's ring. Yeah, okay. I dunno, I can think of a million and half other vanity places to put that cash other than a honking diamond. Anything that big will always look like costume jewelry THERE I SAID IT. But blessings to them.