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Monday
“I don’t like the ‘nepo baby’ term,” said Kate Winslet in an interview with BBC News last week to promote her directorial debut, Goodbye June – the Christmas movie written by her 21-year-old son that would definitely still have been made had his parents both worked in insurance. (His dad is Sam Mendes.)
With this in mind, I tip my hat to Rocco Ritchie, who this week posted a photo on social media in which he can be seen flanked by his famous parents at the launch of his new art show in London. “It’s obvious why some people might hold judgment against me,” he wrote, gracefully. “I don’t blame them. However, I am proud to be who I am, but I’m even prouder to have both of my parents together in one room supporting me.”
That’s how to do it! Further recognition in this area goes to True Whitaker, daughter of the Oscar winning actor, Forest Whitaker, currently appearing in the TV show I Love LA as nepo baby, Alani – a nepo baby playing a nepo baby to such winning and hilarious effect that it entirely neutralises the term nepo baby. Meanwhile, at the less reality-based end of things, “these kids are not getting a leg up”, insisted Winslet. “There are lots of people in the world whose children go into the family business, whether it’s being a judge or a lawyer or a doctor.” The difference, I guess, is that to become a lawyer or a doctor you still have to study for years, even if your mum sits on the high court. But assuredly you can become Kate Hudson by having no further qualification or apparent aptitude – I don’t know if you saw her in Bride Wars – than being the child of Goldie Hawn.
Tuesday
It must be a side-effect of getting older, or possibly just seasonal derangement syndrome, but I’m increasingly vulnerable to wobbly feelings around this country’s ultimate nepo babies, the royals. The release of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Christmas card this week sat for a while as the top story on the Daily Mail website and did what royal stories are supposed to do: provide momentary relief from the horror of the rest of the news cycle.
Instead, we could delight in Prince Louis with his gappy teeth, and good old George, who looks increasingly like the late queen don’t you think, and sweet Charlotte, and I even felt fleetingly warm towards Prince William, for whom the only suitable word in any context is, “clenched”. Elsewhere in the family, Elizabeth II’s favourite grandchild, Lady Louise, was captured sitting on the floor of the crowded 10.30am Great Western train from London to Bristol, working on her laptop and surrounded by feet – a true people’s princess.
Louise, the daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie, is referred to these days as the royal family’s “secret weapon”, owing to her modest affect, lack of interest in Chinese spies, and love of carriage driving, a blameless equestrian sport in which you steer a horse and cart around an arena, avoiding obstacles as you go. After the train thing this week, Louise has become hands down my favourite royal after Princess Anne, although I’m also a big fan of the 90-year-old Duke of Kent, who, when duty arises, will appear on the palace balcony in his Nutcracker uniform with the grim determination of a mechanical bird.
Wednesday
Timothée Chalamet promotes his ping-pong movie Marty Supreme this week, and while the actor can’t field a reference from the Bible, you can’t fault his knowledge of light entertainment. Asked by the BBC this week who in Britain he considers truly great, commentators were surprised when he answered Susan Boyle – specifically, her first audition for Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, which Chalamet remembered seeing when he was 13. “I remember that like it was yesterday,” the actor said. “She dreamt bigger than all of us.”
This is a very good answer and not incongruous at all. The clip of that audition, which has been viewed 30m times on YouTube, is a superb piece of television, from Simon Cowell’s “She’s nuts” eye roll, to Amanda Holden’s weepy over-reaction, to Boyle herself, good humoured in the face of undisguised mockery before she blows them all away. A friend and I have obsessively watched the clip for years, so that when either of us forgets a word in a sentence we go instantly to Boyle: “It’s a sort of collection … it’s a collection of uh, villages. I had to think there.” (Responding to Chalamet’s shout out, Boyle said: “We all start somewhere, with a dream and a bit of hope, don’t we? We should all dream big.” Well said, Susan.).
Thursday
Another viral moment: the Coldplay concert in Boston in July in which an embrace picked up by kisscam between two consenting adults who ducked for cover, was later viewed 100m times on TikTok. This week, the New York Times tracked down and interviewed Kristin Cabot, the woman in the couple, and her life since then has been hell – death threats, people shouting at her in the street, resignation from her job and an inability to be hired elsewhere.
Per the interview, the icing on the cake of this awful experience was Gwyneth Paltrow’s use of the video to make a mocking commercial for Astronomer, the company for which both Cabot and the man in the video, Andy Byron, her boss at the time, both worked. Prior to that moment, Cabot says, she had been an admirer of Paltrow’s – there’s your first mistake – and a fan of Goop, Paltrow’s lifestyle brand that sells itself on a mission to “empower, support and uplift women”, as Cabot put it. The bandwagoning by Paltrow, she said, felt like a gut punch. (Paltrow could not be reached for comment). Just a hunch but while Cabot was being called a slut, a homewrecker and a gold-digger online, I suspect Byron slunk away broadly unharmed.
Friday
Last day of term, limping to the finish line, nothing in the fridge, millions of presents to wrap, didn’t book my Sainsbury’s delivery slot in time so will have to take the big bag to the store on Monday, failed to send any Christmas cards, regret caving in to the “table top ice maker” on my kids’ Christmas list – I don’t have the counter space! – and have an itchy head, again. (Yes, I have the stuff.) But it’s mild out there, the cats are asleep under the tree, and it’s impossible to be anything but cheerful. Happy Christmas!
