Helen Holmes

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyIt’s been just six months since “Me & U” singer Cassie Ventura filed an explosive lawsuit against her ex, Sean “Diddy” Combs, accusing the rapper and mogul of rape, beatings, and even executing a car bombing. The suit was settled under undisclosed terms less than 48 hours after Ventura filed, and yet it seemingly opened the floodgates for a succession of similar lawsuits against Combs, who’s since been accused by multiple plaintiffs of sexual misconduct.Then, last week, surveillance footage emerged of Combs assaulting Ventura in a hotel room hallway. The rapper’s attempt at an Instagram apology video could do little to stem the tide against him. For anyone who was still giving him the benefit of the doubt at this point, that video was the last straw. And now, as a result of the lawsuits, federal raids, and hard video evidence, several prominent figures and institutions are urgently reevaluating their past associations with Combs.Last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave Combs a key to the city. In an interview with PIX11 on Monday, Adams said that he was “deeply disturbed” by the surveillance video and that he was “taking everything under analysis” to figure out what further action the city might take in terms of potentially rescinding the key.Read more at The Daily Beast.

John Lamparski/WireImageA server at The Ribbon restaurant on the Upper West Side is suing his place of employment and Paramount Pictures, the distributor of the 2024 musical film Mean Girls, for discrimination, because, the server says, he was prevented from working at a release party for the movie because of his weight. In his lawsuit, which was filed on Monday and has been reviewed by The Daily Beast, plaintiff Joseph Sacchi—described as “a young, talented singer trained in classical opera [who] supplements his income by working as a server”—claims that his employer, The Ribbon, “excluded him from working at the reception because representatives from Paramount Pictures, the distributors of Mean Girls, specifically asked that he be excluded, solely based on his appearance.”Sacchi is 6’2” and weighs 360 pounds, his suit notes. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Zoulerah NORDDINE / AFPFrancis Ford Coppola’s confounding epic Megalopolis finally debuted this week at the Cannes Film Festival, and the beloved, iconic director behind The Godfather franchise has been dropping bon mots left and right. He’s 85 years old, after all, and who wouldn’t expect him to be a little quirky? Megalopolis, meanwhile, is reportedly so bizarre that it’s prompting trauma bonds between critics. Megalopolis is a go-for-broke passion project that reportedly cost Coppola $120 million of his own money, prompting Cannes reporters to pepper him with questions about money at a press conference on Friday.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Warner Bros.Ever since her breakout role in the harrowing horror film The Witch, actress Anya Taylor-Joy has stood out as not only a talent to watch, but a formidable, unflappable presence. Maybe that’s part of why her latest interviews surrounding George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in which she stars as the titular heroine, have caused such a palpable ripple of alarm. Like some of her Mad Max predecessors, Taylor-Joy appears to have gone through hell and back in order to pull off the job.The groundbreaking 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road notoriously required its actors, crew, and stunt team to perform while isolated in the desert in Namibia for months and, as its prequel, Furiosa necessitated similar filming conditions. Even so, one imagines that such extreme requirements would inspire some sense of camaraderie. But as Taylor-Joy told reporter Kyle Buchanan at the New York Times this week, “I’ve never been more alone than making [Furiosa]. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”When Buchanan pressed the actress for more details, Taylor-Joy demurred, saying, “Talk to me in 20 years.” She eventually opened up a bit further, explaining that because of Miller’s bare-boned script and hard-nosed vision for her character, “months” went by on set without her character speaking a single line. Read more at The Daily Beast.

YouTube/Piers Morgan UncensoredOne week after his contentious interview with Fiona Harvey—the real-life inspiration behind Netflix’s hit series Baby Reindeer, which details the obsessive habits of a stalker—Piers Morgan seems to be reconsidering his take on the situation. Appearing on ITV’s Lorraine on Tuesday, the British host argued that Netflix “failed in their duty of care to Harvey, there’s no question about that.”Harvey was rapidly tracked down and identified by fans of the Netflix series, which was written by and stars Richard Gadd. In the show, Gadd plays a fictionalized version of himself as the target of a prolific stalker named Martha who sends him thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and even physically assaults him.Morgan pressed Harvey hard during his interview with her, which has already accumulated close to 11 million views on YouTube. Harvey conceded to Morgan that “there may have been a couple of emails,” that she sent to Gadd, but she insisted she “didn’t lunge at him across the bar, I didn’t go to jail.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesAfter a months-long break from the stage—during which she took every opportunity to cheer on her Super Bowl-winning boyfriend from the stands—Taylor Swift is back on the road. The pop star’s Eras Tour swept the Americas last year, and now it’s Europe’s turn. Swift will spend the next four months hitting major hubs like London and Stockholm before returning stateside for one more North American leg this fall.So, yes, we’re now heading into year two of headline-dominating Eras Tour discourse. Since debuting the three-hour victory lap of her greatest hits last March in Arizona, Swift’s show has already managed to gross over $1 billion, making the Eras Tour the first tour in history to cross that milestone. It’s projected that by the time the tour concludes, a $2 billion gross could be within Swift’s reach. Thus far, fan reviews of their experiences at the Eras Tour have been overwhelmingly positive. But the sheer size of the stadiums Swift is packing have necessitated infrastructural sophistication from its organizers on a level that’s rarely, if ever, been seen in pop music. As such, there have been a few hiccups.Read more at The Daily Beast.

YouTube/screengrabOn the latest episode of Club Random with Bill Maher, comedian Bill Burr left Maher scratching his head when Burr, who has famously passionate opinions on the subject of cancel culture, confidently declared the phenomenon to be over. Maher had steered into semi-predictable territory only minutes into the show when he brought up Louis C.K., the once-revered auteur comedian whose career came to a grinding halt when he was accused by several women of exposing himself and masturbating in front of them—behavior that his accusers said was very much unwanted. “You have a very big future in filmmaking, very much like Louis C.K.” Maher began, before lamenting C.K.’s supposed cancellation: “Enough. Enough. It’s not the end of the world. People have done so much worse things and gotten less. There’s no rhyme or reason to the Me Too-type punishments.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for GLAADJennifer Lawrence has chilled out a little since the peak of her self-deprecating relatable-girl interview era, but she can still be relied upon to deliver some key zingers when it matters. On Saturday, for example, Lawrence delivered a speech at the GLAAD Awards in New York City in which she made her disdain for former Vice President Mike Pence very obvious. “He’s in New York tonight... receiving a Kid’s Choice Award for weirdest dick,” she told the audience, breaking into laughter. “I didn’t write that one.”“Hi gays,” was how Lawrence, who was attending the GLAAD event to honor queer country star Orville Peck, began her speech. “I love seeing so many humans who can top their field while still being power bottoms.”“I love the gay community. In fact, I was in love with a homosexual. I tried to convert him for years, but now I know conversion therapy doesn’t work,” she said. “Did you hear me, Mike Pence? I said conversion therapy isn’t real, even though I know you think it worked on you.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

John TaggartDonald Trump’s ongoing hush money trial is the pinnacle of American spectacle, a lurid phantasmagoria of shifty lawyers and adult failsons (Hi, Eric!) tweeting their way through the embarrassment of public scrutiny.Any hard-nosed political reporter would kill for a regular spot in the courtroom, and visual artist Isabelle Brourman is one of the lucky few. The New York native works in several mediums, but her current focus is courtroom sketches, which she’s producing at a breakneck clip for New York magazine while covering the trial.Courtroom sketching is a centuries-old art, and its practitioners in the New York City media scene are mostly old-guard traditionalists. At 30, Brourman’s age sets her apart from her peers, but it’s her sketches that are the truly extraordinary draw. Rather than capturing one person at a time, Brourman’s watercolor and colored-pencil figures overlap and bleed into one another like atoms clustered within the same organism. There’s abstraction at play here, but journalistic diarism too.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Prince Williams/FilmMagic/Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Rémy MartinRapper 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex-partner, Daphne Joy this week. Back in March, Joy publicly accused Jackson of raping and physically abusing her during their relationship, claims which Jackson says are baseless. Jackson claims in his suit that Joy (full name Daphne Joy Narvaez) made allegations were not only “false and defamatory,” but that were a “calculated attack”—an attack that his lawyer says was likely motivated by Narvaez's relationship with embattled hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.“Despite being given ample opportunity to retract a false and malicious retaliatory accusation, Ms. Narvaez has shamefully chosen to interfere with her 11-year-old son’s relationship with his loving father by falsely calling him a ‘rapist,’” Reena Jain, one of Jackson’s lawyers, told The Daily Beast in a statement. Read more at The Daily Beast.