New reports surfaced this week claiming former Disney starlet Selena Gomez’s mom was hospitalized. According to numerous media outlets, police were forced to do a welfare check on Selena’s mom Mandy Teefey while she was staying in a hotel last week in Los Angeles. The request was reportedly filed by one of Mandy’s family members.
After the police visited Mandy at her hotel room, she was taken to a nearby hospital and examined. According to TMZ, Selena’s mom voluntarily agreed to go to the hospital and be treated.
While the reason for Mandy’s lapse in wellbeing remains unclear, several sources claim that it was due to an overwhelming amount of stress. One source spoke to a tabloid magazine, saying that Mandy’s health breakdown was triggered by a discussion she was having with Selena about her recently rekindled romance with Justin Bieber. Apparently, the mother-daughter duo got into a fairly heated argument about Selena’s complicated love life.
On Tuesday, fans of Selena discovered that Selena and Mandy were no longer following one another on the social media platform Instagram. In addition, Selena was apparently not by her mother’s side when she was taken to the hospital, and she is now in Seattle with her on-again beau Justin Bieber.
“Justin knows Selena’s family is not happy about her dating him,” an insider says. “He has known for a long time. But he is adamant that he has changed and is a better boyfriend now. He will keep trying to prove himself to her family. He is sad that her mom is not doing well. Selena is very close with her mom, so it’s stressful for her. He wants Selena to be happy.”
Teefey, 41, shared an emotional Instagram post on Monday remembering Scarlett, the daughter she lost to miscarriage in 2011. She shared a series of photos showing her pregnant, including one where Gomez smiles as she places her hand on her mom’s belly, and a throwback photo where Teefey is holding the singer as a baby.
“Thank you to all the fans who honored our Scarlett yesterday,” she captioned the images. “Dec. 17th will never be the same, but we decide to celebrate her by writing her letters on red balloons and releasing them.”
Just like many of his Disney alumni peers, The Greatest Showman star Zac Efron also fell into some trouble during his first few years in the Hollywood spotlight. Shortly after skyrocketing into fame due to the success of Disney’s High School Musical (in which Zac Efron starred as basketball star Troy Bolton), Zac got too involved in the party scene and eventually developed issues with both drugs and alcohol.
In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, the 30-year-old talked candidly about his substance abuse issues, which landed him in rehab back in 2013. The star told the publication, “I’ve done a lot of things that I look back on and go ‘sheesh, are you kidding, what were you thinking?’ It is weird to say because I am also happy that I did all of those things because I am here before you today able to proclaim that this is me and I am very proud of who I am.”
Later in his interview with The Daily Telegraph, Zac also spoke about taking a risk with his role in The Greatest Showman, which is a lively musical that also stars Zendaya and Hugh Jackman. Zac gushed, “We want to achieve that ability to say this is me and feel that. But it is a fleeting moment. It is one that I know I am going to have to face tomorrow. Every day I wake up and I have to start with again the man in the mirror, and it is like starting from square one all over again. You are never perfect, you wake up every day, and there’s a new set of challenges.”
A judge on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit brought by a choreographer who alleged Michael Jackson molested him as a child, resolving one of the last major claims against the late singer’s holdings.
Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s summary judgment ruling against the now-35-year-old Wade Robson found that the two Jackson-owned corporations, which were the remaining defendants in the case, were not liable for Robson’s exposure to Jackson. He did not rule on the credibility of Robson’s allegations themselves.
Robson’s attorney, Vince Finaldi, said he strongly disagrees and plans to appeal.
Robson, a native of Australia who has worked with Britney Spears and NSYNC, met Jackson when he was five years old.
He testified in Jackson’s defense at the singer’s 2005 criminal trial, saying he had spent the night at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch more than 20 times and usually slept in Jackson’s room, but Jackson never molested him. Jackson was acquitted in that trial.
Then in 2013 about four years after the singer’s death, Robson sued the Jackson estate for what his attorneys described as molestation that spanned a seven-year period.
A court ruled in 2015 that Robson had filed his lawsuit too late to get any of Jackson’s estate. That left two remaining defendants, both corporate entities owned by Jackson in his lifetime: MJJ Productions, Inc., and MJJ Ventures, Inc.
The judge ruled Tuesday that those two corporate defendants could not be held responsible for Robson’s exposure to Jackson, the way a school or the Boy Scouts can be found liable for bringing together an abusive adult and a child victim.
Finaldi said the reasoning sets a dangerous precedent.
“What the judge is saying is that you if own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims,” Finaldi told media outlets by phone. “So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable.”
Jackson estate attorney Howard Weitzman said in a statement that he “believes the court made the correct decision in dismissing Wade Robson’s claim against it. “In my opinion, Mr. Robson’s allegations, made 20 plus years after they supposedly occurred and years after Mr. Robson testified twice under oath — including in front of a jury — that Michael Jackson had never done anything wrong to him was always about the money rather than a search for the truth.”
Finaldi replied that the Jackson camp’s interest in the truth was “hollow.”
“If someone’s trying to search for the truth, why not let the lawsuit proceed?” Finaldi said. “Why not exonerate him and let a jury decide.”
During the criminal trial, Robson bristled at testimony by other witnesses that they had seen Jackson molest him.
“I’m telling you nothing happened,” Robson testified at the time when a prosecutor challenged him.
Another Robson attorney said when his lawsuit was filed that stress and sexual trauma led Robson to finally accept that he had been molested by Jackson.
Lady Gaga will join the list of superstars with regularly scheduled shows in Las Vegas in 2018 when she kicks off a two-year residency in December.
Gaga in a statement Tuesday says it has been her “life-long dream” to perform in Las Vegas. She says she is humbled to be joining a historical line-up of performers that include Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.
Lady Gaga put ongoing speculation about a rumored Vegas residency to rest Tuesday afternoon, confirming via an Instagram post that she has partnered with the 5,300-seat MGM Park Theater for a two-year concert series.
“The rumors are true. I will have my own residency in Las Vegas,” she wrote on the social media site. “I was made for this town, and I can’t wait to light up the Park Theater like never before…. this is just the beginning of a new era!”
“It’s the land of Elvis, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, Elton John, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli. It has been a life-long dream of mine to play Las Vegas. I am humbled to be a part of a historical line-up of performers, and to have the honor of creating a new show unlike anything Vegas has ever seen before,” Gaga said via press release. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told my MGM and Park Theater partners – you can count on this performer always for one thing…I’ll leave my heart on the stage every single night. Thank you to my fans for always believing in me. Meet me in Las Vegas baby; we did it!”
The announcement comes at the end of a successful year for the superstar that included a stunning Super Bowl performance and a sold-out tour.
MGM Resorts International did not immediately announce performance dates at Park Theater.
The 5,300-seat venue is located at the Park MGM casino-resort, formerly known as the Monte Carlo. It hosted the residencies of Cher and Ricky Martin.
Actress Meghan Markle has joined her fiance Prince Harry to attend the royal family’s pre-Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace.
Queen Elizabeth II traditionally hosts a festive lunch for the family before leaving for her private Sandringham Estate in the Norfolk countryside, about 110 miles (175 kilometers) north of London, where she spends her holidays.
Press photos show Harry’s car arriving at the palace Wednesday afternoon for the event. Harry, 33, was driving, with 36-year-old Markle in the passenger seat by his side.
The couple announced their engagement last month, saying they had met through a mutual friend in 2016. They will be married on May 19 at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel in a highly-anticipated royal wedding.
Inside the palace, Meghan mingled with a daunting array of royals, as all of the Queen’s children were in attendance, along with most of her grandchildren. And while she has already met the Queen a few times, this is thought to be the first time Meghan has had a lunch with the entire family at the palace.
Meghan is meeting much of the extended royal family for the first time as well as being gradually introduced to other members of the household. Last week, the Queen took her and Harry to a private party for staffers at Windsor Castle. “It was a good opportunity for her to get to know the close part of the family as it were,” a family friend says.
“It’s incredible,” Meghan said during the couple’s engagement interview about meeting the Queen. “To be able to meet her through [Harry’s] lens, not just with his honor and respect for her as Monarch, but with the love he has for her as his grandmother. She’s an incredible woman.”
Meghan has won over all of Harry’s family members, especially Will and Kate.
Harry said: “William was longing to meet her and so was Catherine, so you know being our neighbors we managed to get that in a couple of – well quite a few times now and Catherine has been absolutely amazing, as has William as well, you know, fantastic support.”
Meghan herself added of Kate: “She’s been wonderful.”
Potty-mouthed flameout White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci spoke to NYC Jews about his inspiring pilgrimage to Israel — but still couldn’t resist laying into his nemesis Steve Bannon as a “messianic loser.”
For unfathomable reasons, the Mooch was invited to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s Hanukkah party to speak about his trip to Israel, just weeks after a tone-deaf Holocaust poll appeared in the Scaramucci Post. But the man who lasted a mere ten days in the West Wing, before being fired over an obscenity-filled interview, once again went wildly off-script during his Sunday night sermon at the rabbi’s Upper West Side townhouse.
Of Bannon, he told the crowd, “He’s a loser. He’ll be a stalwart defender of Israel until he’s not. That’s how this guy operates. I’ve seen this guy operate. He was a stalwart defender of me until it became better for him not to be.” The Mooch added, “The problem with Bannon is he’s a messianic figure. It’s his way or the highway. He was dramatically and incredibly divisive in the White House . . . He was leaking on everybody . . . You don’t leak on the president if you’re the president’s senior adviser. So the guy’s a loser.”
And he didn’t even get to Bannon’s baneful backing of accused Alabama pedophile Roy Moore.
Mooch also described the “kill or be killed” atmosphere in the White House: “The first pill you take is the ‘anti-friendship’ pill. You can be my friend for 30 years, but I’m gonna stab your eyeball out with an ice pick if it gets me more power. The second pill you take is the ‘power is aphrodisiac’ pill. Students of history know that power corrupts and it corrupts absolutely.”
Naturally, he says he should not have been fired as President Trump’s mouthpiece, even though he had said of Bannon, “I’m not trying to suck my own c – – k.” And “Reince [Priebus, former chief of staff,] is a f – – king paranoid schizophrenic.”
The magniloquent Mooch joked to Boteach’s bunch that instead of showing him the door, chief of staff John Kelly should have “given me a bar of soap, told me to wash my mouth out and ‘let’s get back to work.’ What I said about those people . . . was basically true and everybody knew that.”
Wyatt Koch — the son of billionaire Bill Koch — is suing his ex-fiancée to get back an 8.24-carat ring after she broke off their engagement, according to court documents. Wyatt’s lawyers claim that he purchased the pricey Oscar Heyman cushion-cut diamond with two tapered baguette diamonds for $180,000 in March for a Tallahassee lassie named Ivie Gabrielle Slocumb.
But come May — after she allegedly “broke off” the engagement — Slocumb kept the rock. Wyatt’s lawyers say the ring’s now worth $250,000, and Wyatt also wants $15,000 in damages.
According to court documents filed in Florida circuit court, Wyatt — known in Palm Beach as the flame-haired, flamboyantly attired CEO of his own Palm Beach fashion line, Wyatt Ingraham — has “demanded the return of the ring . . . on multiple occasions” and says that the would-be bride “received the ring as a conditional gift. She refuses to return it despite proper demand and the condition not being fulfilled.”
A receipt filed with the court reflects that he also splashed out on a $7,750 “platinum diamond pendant” with 56 round diamonds, that’s not part of the suit.
The engagement — as well as Slocumb — are otherwise a bit of a mystery.
Slocumb has 20 days to respond to the suit, according to a summons dated Dec. 13. Attorneys for Koch and Slocumb did not get back to media questions.
In an Instagram video posted earlier this year for his clothing line that specializes in shirts with out-there patterns and colors, Wyatt explains, “My father said to me, ‘Wyatt, you can do whatever you want to in life. Just make sure you do it well and do it with passion.’ ”
The billionaire scion adds in the video, “Everyday I go to the office, I enjoy creating the clothes. ‘Be bold’ means to me — be authentic, be real, be yourself, be confident and always be a gentleman — but still have that tenacity that no one can take away from you. I want my shirts to be able to be worn in the boardroom or in the discoteca or a nightclub — or on a yacht. I really wanted to create something that’s fun, outside the box, cool, trendy, yet really bold and interesting.”
With the Golden Globes quickly approaching, dozens of Hollywood’s biggest female stars have banded together and pledged to wear black in protest of all of the sexual abuse and misconduct scandals that have surfaced from within the industry. Stars like Meryl Streep and Amber Tamblyn are slated to join in on the trend, displaying their support and solidarity for all those who have been affected by the wrongdoings of some of Hollywood’s biggest male executives and stars.
However, despite all of the support the impending protest has gotten, star Rose McGowan recently expressed her disapproval of it and even slammed stars – like Meryl Streep – for their apparent hypocrisy. On Saturday, Rose took to her Twitter to write, “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster (aka Harvey Weinstein), are wearing black [to the Golden Globes] in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly and affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”
After hearing about Rose’s criticism, Meryl spoke with the Huffington Post about her reaction to Rose’s point. The legendary actress confessed, “It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.” Meryl went on to add, “I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.”
Despite Rose’s criticism of the whole movement, it is likely we will still see the majority of the female stars at this year’s Golden Globes sporting all black ensembles.
Someone in Los Angeles doesn’t believe that Meryl Streep didn’t know what was going on with Harvey Weinstein, as the actress is now being targeted by street signs that read “She knew.”
Posters of Streep with a red and white “She knew” banner — reminiscent of the style made famous by artist Barbara Kruger — over her eyes went up around Los Angeles on Tuesday near the SAG-AFTRA building, Hollywood, and Highland complex and in Pasadena near Streep’s home.
Whoever is responsible for the signage remains unknown.
The posters came after Rose McGowan called out Streep for allegedly knowing what was going on with Weinstein. The Oscar-winning actress addressed McGowan’s allegations directly and unequivocally denied her accusations.
“It hurt to be attacked by [McGowan] … but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others,” Streep’s statement to Page Six read. “I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape … I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.”
On Monday, “Team” singer Iggy Azalea took to her Twitter page to dispute a rumour that was recently reported about her in the Daily Mail. As you may remember, Iggy had a messy split from her fiancé Nick Young a while back after she found out that he had been cheating on her. In fact, the NBA star actually got another woman pregnant while he was in a committed relationship with Iggy.
On Sunday (December 17), Iggy was spotted heading into the popular West Hollywood restaurant Craig’s. Subsequently, after Iggy made her arrival, Nick Young was seen heading into the same venue. Inevitably, this led to some speculation, as one reporter at the Daily Mail wrote up an article, claiming that Iggy and Nick had met up for an intimate dinner together on Sunday. After seeing the article, Iggy took to her social media to explain what actually happened.
Iggy posted on Twitter, “The unfortunate thing about LA is there are not that many places people eat. You can be in the middle of one of the most important dinner meetings of your life; and randomly your ex and all his friends walk in the same place.”
The songstress went on to directly address the Daily Mail article that made the initial claim about her and Nick reconnecting, calling out the writer Ryan Smith, “I hope all your Christmas gifts contain boxes of dried up chips of dog s*** for trying to imply I would EVER, EVER have a dinner date with my ex who created a full human behind my back. Especially when he came 3 whole hours after I did with 10 other [people]. Please leave me the f*** along to live my life in peace. It’s awkward enough as it is….”
Iggy Azalea, Twitter post:
https://twitter.com/IGGYAZALEA/status/942759824395182080
On Sunday’s episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kris Jenner talked candidly about everything that went down between her and her ex-Caitlyn Jenner. During the latest episode, Kris’s daughter Kim forced her mother, as well as several of her siblings (Khloe, Kendall, and Kourtney) to attend media training, where they learned how to answer difficult questions. One of the topics that Kris admitted to having difficulties talking about was Caitlyn, her former husband, and father of two of her kids (Kylie and Kendall).
During a mock interview, one of the media coaches asked Kris, “Kris, looking back, were there signs that Bruce at the time wanted to become a woman? Did you turn a blind eye?” To which Kris responded, “No, I don’t think I turned a blind eye, I think I just didn’t have the whole truth of what was going on in his life.”
Kris also discussed Caitlyn’s book, which throws ample shade at the matriarch. The media trainer questioned the mogul, “What were some of the most hurtful things in Caitlyn’s book?” Kris candidly responded, “Well, I think just the general tone of the book; Very mean-spirited, a lot of inaccuracies. I think somebody with a little elegance and class and somebody that’s been divorced but trying to stay on good terms with the family might have written, ‘Wow, married to her, didn’t work out, she’s a great girl, wish it could have been different.’” During this scene, Kendall (daughter of Kris and Caitlyn), looked visibly uncomfortable, as she has had to figure out how to maintain a relationship with both her parents amidst all the animosity between them.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians is set to return January 7, 2018 on E!