Plus: The Chateau Marmont’s A-List comeback, and Jeff Bezos’s puzzling Trump-pleasing moves.
Meghan Markle’s Last Stand: The Kitchen
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the history of streaming has so much been paid to so few for so little. But on Jan. 15, with the debut of the much anticipated With Love, Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will have perhaps one last chance to prove they’re really worth the $100 million Netflix ponied up in that 2020 five-year deal to produce and appear in shows and movies. So far, the couple’s output has been less than majestic. Yes, their initial 2022 domestic life docuseries, Harry & Meghan, was a hit, even if critics roasted it back at home (“So sickening I almost brought up my breakfast,” The Guardian sneered). But everything the Duke and Duchess have churned out since — their social justice series, Live to Lead; Harry’s pet project on the wounded-warrior games, Heart of Invictus, and his other pet project, Polo, about the aristocracy’s pickleball — were royal flops. One of Meghan’s projects, the children’s series Pearl, was canceled before production began. Still, sources inside the streamer insist there’s optimism over Meghan’s new show, a Sue Ann Nivens-like series in which the happy homemaker putters around the house doling out cooking and gardening tips. For Harry and Meghan, the stakes couldn’t be higher; their Netflix contract is almost up, and it’s hard to imagine a renewal if With Love, Meghan doesn’t deliver. At least one enthusiastic Netflix insider, though, continues to curtsy for the couple. “There will be future opportunities,” she insists. “This isn’t the end. This is just the beginning.” — Emily Smith
A-Listers Swarm the Chateau Once Again
If there were any remaining doubts that the Chateau Marmont is back, the festivities on Jan. 4 should put them to rest. The iconic Hollywood hotel — recently rocked by the pandemic and a series of seemingly forgotten scandals involving longtime owner André Balazs — was ground zero for A-list action on the eve of the Golden Globes as it hosted W Magazine’s annual celebration for its Best Performances issue. (To add to the bold-faced bustle, Amazon and Vanity Fair teamed for a joint Globes bash at Bar Marmont next door.) The Chateau penthouse was overflowing with actors and assorted glitterati, including two of last year’s biggest pop stars in Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter. Angelina Jolie huddled with Zoe Saldaña, Andrew Garfield with Ayo Edebiri, Jessica Gunning with pal Andrew Scott. Nicole Kidman introduced her daughter Sunday Rose to a few actors, Daniel Craig arrived with Bryan Lourd, and Taika Waititi held court on the terrace — while security dealt with a stream of hopeful party crashers. But the center of action proved to be a large table in the restaurant occupied by the team from The Brutalist. Director Brady Corbet loudly workshopped a Globes acceptance speech (the first of which he would nervously read from an iPhone the next night). Though he went through several iterations, Corbet did not mention what turned out to be his mic-drop moment during his film’s best picture win: “Final-cut tiebreak goes to the director. It’s sort of a controversial statement. It shouldn’t be.” — Chris Gardner
Has Jeff Bezos Gone Full MAGA?
There is probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Amazon is reportedly paying $40 million for the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump. But until we figure what on earth that might be, here’s an unreasonable one that commenters across Hollywood and media have raised: Amazon owner Jeff Bezos has gone full MAGA. Although the world’s second richest man hasn’t embraced Donald Trump as fervently as the richest, DOGE czar Elon Musk, there have been several hard-to-miss signals. For starters, there was the kerfuffle in October at Bezos’ The Washington Post after the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris was unexpectedly spiked. Then, on election night, there was the lightning-fast speed with which Bezos tweeted Trump congratulations (it took all of five hours). Around New Year’s, a Post cartoon lampooning Bezos for sucking up to the president-elect was killed. And now, the Melania doc, the latest hint that Bezos has made a hand-brake turn to the right. To give it all an extra-Trumpy tinge, the director shooting the film will be Brett Ratner, the Rush Hour auteur who once was business partners with Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first-term Treasury secretary. Ratner hasn’t picked up a camera since 2017, when Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, among others, accused him of sexual assault, which he denies. A Bezos representative declined a request for comment.
