Oscar Isaac has said that he’d want to see some changes behind the scenes at Disney before he agreed to appear in another Star Wars movie.
The Frankenstein star played the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron in the rebooted Star Wars trilogy between 2015 and 2019, and in the six years since, has repeatedly been grilled about whether he’d ever be keen to return to that galaxy far, far away.
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During a recent interview with GQ, it was mentioned that he’d once said he’d only return to the sci-fi saga if he needed “another house or something”, commenting: “Yeah. That was a real likeable quote. Jesus Christ.
“Y’know, people ask you things, you say stuff, you don’t really think about it that much. I said a slightly dickish thing.”
The magazine’s reporter then pointed out that Oscar had seemingly softened on the idea in more recent years, to which he admitted that he is “open to” a new Star Wars movie – albeit not at this exact moment in history.
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“Right now I’m not so open to working with Disney,” he admitted. “But if they can kinda figure it out and, you know, not succumb to fascism, that would be great.”
The incident stemmed from a comedy monologue, during which the comedian observed: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
After the news broke that Jimmy was being suspended because of this comment, many called for a boycott of the streaming services Disney+ and Hulu (both of which are owned and operated by Disney), with the company reported to have taken a hit of around $3 billion overnight.
Oscar isn’t the only member of the Star Wars reboot’s cast to have some choice words for Disney, though, after John Boyega claimed the studio failed to flesh out the characters played in the series by actors of colour compared to those portrayed by their white counterparts.
Last week, it was revealed that Alan had done what four weeks earlier would have been unthinkable and pulled the wool over enough of his fellow players’ eyes to make it all the way to the end of The Celebrity Traitors.
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Because of this, he managed to snag the full £87,500 prize pot for his charity, opting to give it all to Neuroblastoma UK, of which he is a patron.
Posting on Instagram after the episode aired, the charity said: “Alan, what a moment. We can’t tell you how grateful we are.
“We’ve adored watching you over the last three weeks; all the more so with that glimmer of hope that if you did well, it might just mean something big for our small charity. And you did it.”
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Alan Carr reacts to his win during the Celebrity Traitors final
BBC/Studio Lambert/Paul Chappells
They continued: “As our faithful Patron for nine years, your commitment, compassion, and drive to bring hope to children and families facing this aggressive cancer have been nothing short of transformational. As a small charity with a big mission, you know how much this means to us.
“For many years, we’ve known you to be generous, warm, empathetic, and unfalteringly kind, and we’re so pleased the nation agrees with us on that. Now, we promise to do you proud. Our commitment to you is that through research, we will find better treatments and ultimately a cure for every child facing Neuroblastoma.”
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Alan also said: “It’s an absolute privilege to be able to support Neuroblastoma UK, whether it’s raising awareness or funds, I’m so pleased I can use my platform to show how amazing this charity is.”
In one of the series’ more unexpectedly emotional moments, Alan broke down in tears of apparent guilt after it was revealed he’d deceived his fellow players for the duration of the game, to which they offered him assurance and reminded him to think of the charity he was helping.
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He later told host Claudia Winkleman that Neuroblastoma UK is a “wonderful children’s cancer charity”, saying: “That money will change lives, thank you. All that lying, all that treachery, it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
After the first instalment of The Celebrity Traitors proved to be the most-watched TV moment of 2025 so far, it’s now been confirmed that a second season will arrive on our screens next year.
A new documentary about the last months of Caroline Flack’s live has now arrived on Disney+.
Caroline Flack: Search For The Truth was made in collaboration with the late Love Island host’s mum, Christine, and explores various various threads leading up to the presenter’s suicide in February 2020.
An official synopsis released by Disney explains: “This [documentary] follows Caroline’s mother, Christine, as she investigates the truth about her daughter’s final months – uncovering new shocking details, asking difficult questions, and exposing the misrepresentations, pressures, and failures from institutions and decision makers that shaped Caroline’s final days.
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“With access to powerful testimony from Caroline’s inner circle and those who were there, the series tells the story she never got to share and reveals an unprecedented look at what really happened to Caroline Flack.”
What are the reviews saying about Disney’s documentary Caroline Flack: Search For The Truth?
Many early reactions to the two-part series have been positive, with The Guardian praising it in a five-star review.
“You may well wonder about the duty of care the programme-makers have towards Christine, and, in fact, to the whole Flack family,” the review points out.
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“Gladly, Search for the Truth is neither exploitative nor cheap. “It’s clear that Christine wasn’t merely parachuted in to front the series: rather, the episodes offer a window into the work she has been doing since her daughter’s death.”
Good Housekeeping described the show as “the docuseries everyone should see”, while a piece in British Vogue agreed: “I’ll admit that before watching the two-part series […] I wondered whether we really needed a retelling of Flack’s tragic demise. I was wrong.
“What had been missing all along, I now realise, was her voice. For all the archival footage out there, in the final days of her life, she was entirely absent from the narrative. According to Flack’s mother, she was advised by lawyers and agents to stay quiet – so she did. It meant that the case for the prosecution was repeated endlessly in the headlines, and on Twitter, but the case for the defence – Flack’s version of events – was never heard before she took her own life.”
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Meanwhile, Celeb Mix’s take on the doc highlights that “for many viewers”, watching Caroline Flack: Search For The Truth will be a “painful” experience as it “revisits a tragedy that remains raw in the public consciousness”.
“But,” they add. “It also offers an opportunity for reflection – for empathy, and for change.”
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A piece published in The Independent also points out that it had actually been Caroline Flack’s own idea to create a documentary allowing her to put forward her side of the story, though she took her own life before she was able to make it happen.
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The i Paper’s take agreed that the project makes for some “incredibly grim” viewing, noting: “The documentary is neither impassioned eulogy, nor sermon about the ills of social media pile-ons, nor screed against what seems now like such obvious wrongdoing – there have been many of all those in the wake of Flack’s death.
“Instead, it is a focused investigation into how Flack’s case was handled, powered by regret from her mother that she could not prevent the unthinkable.”
However, it’s worth noting, though, that not all of the coverage of the project has been so positive.
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The Standard gave it just two stars, branding it “gruesome” and a “repellent true crime framing of a tragedy”, while describing certain sections as “tasteless”.
“In trying to clear Caroline’s name and point fingers, I fear Christine will activate the internet sleuths and their insatiable appetite for true crime,” The Standard’s critic opined.
Both episodes of Caroline Flack: Search For The Truth are now streaming on Disney+.
Help and support:
Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.
During Thursday night’s bumper-length finale, viewers saw the former Chatty Man host manage to pull the wool over the eyes of Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga to make it all the way to the end of the game, nabbing the hefty prize money for himself.
“It feels absolutely amazing to be the first Celebrity Traitors winner,” he enthused. “I mean, who even knew that this would happen? I think I have surprised the nation and, most importantly, I’ve surprised myself. I’m still in shock.”
Reflecting on some of his highlights from the series, Alan named his “favourite moment” as Celia Imrie’s now-infamous fart.
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“Everyone goes, ‘oh ain’t it funny when Celia farted?’, but people forget I was chained to her. I couldn’t get away from it,” he quipped.
On his favourite “murder” of the series, Alan continued: “This sounds so weird, but for me, my favourite kill was Lucy. Because I handed it to her on a plate, well, not a plate, in my hand. I handed it to her, it was done face-to-face.
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“You know what, I got such a taste for killing, it was nice to see their eyes as I murdered them. What have I become?”
He added: “This whole experience has been mind-blowing, it’s been wonderful, it has changed me as a person, and I’ve absolutely loved it. But you know, all good things must come to an end. And as Shakespeare said, parting is such sweet sorrow…”
The cast of The Celebrity Traitors pictured with host Claudia Winkleman
During the interview, Jen hailed Piggy as a “feminist icon”, and explained that the germ of the idea for the new movie came during lockdown, at a time when so-called “cancel culture” was being debated extensively, and a friend suggested: “It would be so funny if Miss Piggy got cancelled.”
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“Now, that is not the plot [of the film], necessarily,” the former Hunger Games actor was quick to clarify. “But it got the wheels turning. [We realised], ’wait, there hasn’t actually been, like, a feminist Miss Piggy starring [role]. So I started producing it.”
She revealed she then turned to Emma Stone for help with co-producing as she considers herself more of an “ideas guy”, while the Poor Things star is both a “Muppets-head” and a “shark”.
“I went to her to be like, ‘what do we do?’,” Jennifer added. “So now, Cole is writing it, and they are perfect. And yeah!”
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Asked if she’ll also star in the project, she replied: “I think so. I mean, I have to be. I mean, I want to be.”
Miss Piggy first shot to fame in the 1970s, when she was introduced as the resident diva on The Muppet Show.
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In the decades since, she’s become one of the franchise’s most cherished stand-out characters, most recently appearing in 2021’s Muppets Haunted Mansion.
Former Strictly Come Dancing champion Ore Oduba has opened up about the first time about a porn addiction that he described as having been “destroying my life from the inside out”.
As the interview progressed, Ore first opened up what had made him want to publicly disclose his past issues relating to porn, explaining: “There is a part of me that is terrified. I say ‘a part of me’ – the vast majority is terrified, because I feel like personally, for me, the rest of my life begins the day after this, as it’s a kind of a seminal ‘draw a line’ moment.
“I’ve got so much going on up here. I have no idea how it’s going to come out, but I know it’s going to come from a very important place. And we talked for a long time about where we should have this conversation. And in the end, it had to be you and it had to be you. What you create here is safety.”
He continued: “It’s something that I was really keen to bring to this conversation, to talk to you about, because it was only as a result of all of these awakenings that a year and a half ago, I was able to escape an addiction that had dogged me for nearly 30 years.”
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Ore then shared that his addiction dates back to when he was nine years old, when he was “introduced for the first time to pornography” by a friend’s older brother.
“That’s when my addiction started,” he said. “And I think after everything that’s happened, only understanding how much of a thread that had been throughout my life was I was finally able to escape it, because I know it had been dogging me. It had been destroying my life from the inside out.
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“But it was the thing that, from a very early age, was what I was running to as a response to a lot of the trauma.”
Recalling his initial reaction to discovering pornography, Ore explained: “This was 30 years ago, at a time when we didn’t have the accessibility that we do now. I was just shown some adult images on the computer, and I remember being very intrigued and a feeling of eyes being opened.
“And whilst I wouldn’t say addiction set in immediately, the intrigue started immediately. And it didn’t take long, relatively speaking, for that intrigue to start running my mind over – because at nine, at that age, you haven’t necessarily got full access. You know, this is dial-up at the time. This is the 90s. And [I wanted] to find a way to address that intrigue, wanting to find ways of [replicating] that awakening or find it, whether it was on television or in magazines.”
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Ore also said that he felt unable to discuss his issues as a child because of his strict upbringing, eventually dealing with it when the burden of hiding it felt like too much for him to bear.
Initially, Ore rose to fame as a host of the CBBC series Newsround, as well as serving as a sports correspondent on various BBC News shows.
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After winning Strictly in 2016, he has broadened his presenting horizons, and has also embarked on a career in stage performing, appearing in theatrical productions like Grease, Curtains The Musical and The Rocky Horror Show.
The Ocean’s Eleven actor is involved in a bit of a public feud with the former president’s son, as Clooney was one of the most public figures to call for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race ahead of the 2024 election.
“Fuck him!” the president’s son said at the time. “Fuck him and everybody around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice. Number one, I agree with Quentin Tarantino. Fucking George Clooney is not a fucking actor. He’s fucking like … I don’t know what he is. He’s a brand.”
“What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his fucking life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the fucking New York Times to undermine the president,” he continued.
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Clooney had a less heated response to the artist’s outburst.
“I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things he said because many of the things he said were just outright lies,” Clooney said in a new interview with CBS that aired over the weekend.
“But the reality is, I don’t think looking backwards like that is helpful to anyone ― particularly to him,” the Oscar winner added, before getting in a little dig.
“I don’t think it’s helpful for the Democratic Party, and so I’m just gonna wish him well on his ongoing recovery, and I hope he does well and just leave it at that,” Clooney shared. “I have many personal opinions about it, but I don’t find it to be helpful to have a public spat with him.”
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“I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary,” the actor told CBS.
“I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record,” he said, adding that “it’s very hard to do, if the point of running is to say, ‘I’m not that person.’ It’s hard to do.”
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“And so she was given a very tough task,” Clooney said.
If there’s one thing to know about the singer-songwriter Eli, it’s that she loves pop music. Like, really loves it, with an appreciation that stretches right back to her childhood, a knowledge that verges on encyclopaedic and a passion that shines through not just in her music and her visuals, but also when we catch up with her just days before the release of her debut album, Stage Girl.
The first time Eli recalls being stopped in her tracks by pop music was hearing Mariah Carey’s Christmas album as a child in her family home.
“My parents would play that album during the holiday season, and it was one of the first times that, in an insanely impactful way, I was hearing something and I was like, ‘what the fuck is entering my ears right now?’.
“I hate to say this, because people say this about a lot of singers and it’s cliché, but it felt like heaven’s gates were opening. Hearing her, while I was hanging ornaments on the tree, I was like, ‘I need to Shazam this’ – too scared to ask my parents like, ‘hey, who is this?’.”
“I live for Hannah Montana,” Eli enthuses. “Now, later in life, I’m owning the fact that she was such a big influence, because maybe from 15 to 20 or something, I would not want to say that. I would be like, ‘no, I love Björk’, or like, ‘I’m really into cool shit’. But Hannah Montana is cool as fuck.”
Eli has been a pop fan since childhood, which she’s channelled into her much-hyped new album
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Looking back, it’s not too hard to imagine why Eli – growing up as a queer child in suburbanMassachusetts, with what felt like impossible hopes of pursuing her own dreams – would feel an affinity to Miley’s character in the show,an unremarkable schoolgirl by day, who could don a blonde wig and become someone else entirely.
“There were so many layers underneath what the Disney corporation was putting forward,” she says of Hannah Montana. “That is my favourite stuff, when it peeks through. It reminds me of myself, and my little repressed life.
“Until now, I feel like a lot of things were being hidden, that were trying to shine through – things that I love about myself as a human now.”
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Eli’s love for Miley continued as the former child star’s career evolved, and she shed her Disney image on songs like Can’t Be Tamed and during her headline-grabbing Bangerz era.
“Seeing it all unfold, it was so cool to see someone escape this place that may have been a bit repressed, or conservative, or ‘got to be bottled up’, ‘got to appeal to the masses’ and ‘appeal to the conservatives’ or whatever,” she says.
“I don’t want to intellectualise it too much, but it’s freaking incredible. And Hannah’s also a drag queen, and also I’m Trannah Montana – so I live for all of it.”
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There’s an obvious reason Eli’s love of pop runs so deep. For the 25-year-old, it often felt like a lifeline during the more difficult and isolating times she faced in her own adolescence.
“Growing up in the prime MTV music video era, I’m seeing Britney Spears, and I’m thinking ‘who the fuck is this woman?’, and everything I ever wanted is being reflected back at me,” she recalls. “And I’m feeling ashamed about it, and confused about it. I’m also feeling invigorated and excited.”
Eli on the cover of her new album Stage Girl
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For that reason, Eli is particularly upset about how pop has historically been so readily dismissed by so-called “serious” music critics and commentators, which she puts down to the fact it has always been a genre enjoyed by women and the queer community.
“It’s misogyny, and it’s patriarchy,” she states. “And it’s like, fuck your rock band. Fuck your boring dad music. It will never be Britney, it will never be Rihanna, it will never ever be Beyoncé, it will never be Madonna, it will never be the glitz, the glam…”
“And not even the glitz and glam!” Eli continues, interrupting her own train of thought. “They tried to do the glitz and glam with fucking glam rock. It’s such an annoying thing, too, when people value [men embracing ‘glam rock’] as high fucking art. And I’m like… from California Gurls and Teenage Dream, I’m getting double, triple, quadruple artistry in that than any of these boring rock bands.”
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“Not David Bowie,” she quickly points out. “Sorry, David Bowie, it’s not about you. But some of these examples – what? You fuck with them because they’re men, and they can wear their hair all colourful, and wear a jumpsuit, but [women] can’t? Fuck you!”
She laments that this “double standard” even permeates those who love pop, pointing out: “Growing up with Kesha and Rihanna and a lot of others, it was like, ‘they can’t sing’. And that shit got to me. I was like, ’oh can they not sing? What is this?’.
“It’s not good, because it affects everyone. You’re so young and impressionable, and there’s so much internalised misogyny, homophobia, all these horrible fucking things.”
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Because of this, Eli found that she often felt a mixture of emotions about owning up to loving the pop stars she idolised when she was growing up.
Listing key moments like seeing Katy Perry’s debut album cover for the first time at Barnes And Noble, or watching tour clips of Ariana Grande on YouTube, Eli remembers “crying in my bed, feeling like, ‘oh my god, I could never be a beautiful feminine woman who embodies everything that I feel like life is about’”.
“They felt like these incredibly important moments in my life, that for a while I was embarrassed by, because of, probably, a lot of the judgement that comes from a lot of the, like, horrible things that men do…” she admits.
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For that reason, when Eli was putting Stage Girl together, she had in the forefront of her mind that she wanted to create something her younger self would be proud of.
Eli counts pop legends like Katy Perry, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana years among some of her earliest inspirations
“Everything from the titles to the lyrics to the sound choices in my production to the cover art of the singles and the cover art of the album, it’s all about little five-year-old Eli, six-year-old Eli, 12-year-old Eli… what would have grabbed her?” she says. “What would have sucked her into this project and made her feel like, ‘I want to listen to this’?”
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Much has been made of the Y2K aesthetic Eli appears to be leaning into in the sound and visuals for her new music, something many other pop artists have had success with in the last few years.
For Eli, though, there’s a deeper meaning to it all.
“It’s not a Y2K project, it’s not trying to recreate any kind of sound from the past,” she insists. “But it’s using sounds and things that existed at a time when I was not feeling safe, and was feeling dysphoric and very detached and a lot of the hard things that [still] make me [sad] – and reclaiming and to trying to give newer generations a place to escape into.”
Eli affirms that she’s happy she’s reached a place where she feels more comfortable “really showing up as me, and really letting myself exist as I am, even in a time when it’s scary to me”.
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“It’s always, I guess, been scary to some extent,” she says, pausing, before changing tact. “But also fuck that, who cares? Let’s ignore the fact that it’s scary. No it’s not scary, actually, pause! I’m living!!”
At this, she beams a smile and lets out an excited scream.
“Being able to be in my body and showing up to music in such a new and exciting way for myself” is something she suggests “subconsciously unfolded” more and more as work on Stage Girl got underway.
“Everything was falling into place as I made pop songs that were just kind of out of… inauguration [terror],” she explains. “The [2024] election to the inauguration is when it started. It was like, ‘maybe I will be locked up and killed’, I was very scared, and still am scared! But…” she trails off again. “Ugh, we’re back to the scared.”
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“But,” she insists. “I wanted to to lean into the joy, and lean into the glamour, and I think that is the driving force.I need that example, and I needed that example, and I had that example from women. And under the family tree of women, how amazing would it be if I’d had that from a trans woman?”
“It’s a small part of the work to be done,” she concedes. “But I do think art has an important place to [create that space] where a young trans woman or a young queer kid could dive into and could exist in, and – on the surface level, – dress up in a costume and have some fun.
“But under all of that, they could really explore, and unpack, and reclaim things that newer generations will also have to face because unfortunately, things are regressing in some ways. I would love to exist on the joyful side, or exist on the side where I am providing the escapism that I needed.”
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Eli hopes that Stage Girl can be an antidote to some of the fear and anxiety many within the LGBTQ+ community are feeling in the current political climate
And it’s not just her own complicated past she wants to reclaim on Stage Girl.
For the last few years, there’s been something of a reckoning over 2000s pop culture, whether that’s the way certain female pop stars were treated by the media, the overworking that many young musicians faced or the exploitation of contestants on shows like The X Factor and American Idol (Eli notes that she tried out for almost all these shows, but never got anywhere with any of them).
Alongside the Stage Girl album, Eli’s accompanying visuals have centred around a fictitious reality series of the same name, with which she hopes to create a more inclusive and welcoming space out of something that could previously have been associated with bullying and toxicity.
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“There were some lovely, incredible things about seeing somebody who I saw myself in, who was like, ‘I’m working this day job’, or ‘I’m a 16-year-old girl and I’m from a random town and here I am, Jordin Sparks, here to perform’,” she says of her younger years spent watching American Idol. “That is amazing in itself. Her standing up there and showing the endless bounds of talent she has, that is beautiful.
“What’s not beautiful is… I don’t know if I should go into detail. But even watching back Jordin Sparks’ audition, I’m a little off-put by the way these male judges treated her. I mean I’m very off-put, honestly, by a lot of the moments that happened in all of those seasons. There were so many examples.”
Eli’s exposure to those kinds of shows from a young age, and the “abuse and bullying” faced by the contestants even led her to question whether the music industry was for her.
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“I loved singing when I was little,” Eli explains. “I loved singing so much, it felt so joyful. But for the person who grew up watching all those shows – and has now made a project that touches upon talent shows and that kind of thing – there was something so horrifying, that I carried with me for years, watching these judges abuse and bully people, who were showing up with their ambition or with their dreams, and just getting completely made fun of in a very terrifying way.
“There was a period of years, where I was like, ‘well I can’t be a singer, because not only am I going to be bullied by these people and judged and ridiculed, also how do I know how what I’m showing up as, and what I think sounds beautiful, is going to be received?’”
As for Eli’s own pop dreams, they’re something that were established when she was a young child and “never left” her.
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“My parents always tell this story,… we were at some kind of family gathering and I was just jumping on the tables at, like, four years old singing The Wiggles, trying to perform,” she enthuses. “And then I would put on shows for my family. My brother and I thought we were like The Jonas Brothers. And then [came] the internet – freaking singing on the internet, because where else was I gonna do it?
“I went behind my parents’ back because they were a little conservative. They were like, ‘you can’t make a social media account’ – which maybe is kind of fabulous of them, looking back. But I didn’t listen. I was just posting covers with tons of hashtags… I had a business email in my bio, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be a fucking star’.”
“And that never went away. I’m still mentally ill,” she adds with a laugh.
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Anyone who’s engaged with Stage Girl so far will know that Eli’s sense of humour is an important part of her personal brand. Her videos have a home-made, DIY feel that allow her warmth and charm to shine through, and she’s also not afraid to lean into the ridiculous side of things to raise a smile or a laugh.
Eli says it’s “refreshing” to be releasing music at a time when other artists (she specifically lists Sabrina Carpenter, Audrey Hobert, Zara Larsson and Chappell Roan, while also pointing out that early Katy Perry was also an influence on her) are allowing their senses of humour to shine in their artform.
“It’s disarming, and it’s also so inviting,” she says. “We need to laugh!”
However, she admits that injecting humour into her art is also something she’s still “trying to find the balance” with.
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“Obviously laughing is actually the life force, laughter is amazing,” she says. “But it’s also sometimes used to mask up serious things, and I’m trying to make sure I stay away from that.
“I sometimes lean into the humour to take away from my sincerity. Sometimes. So, as much as, yes, in my music there’s always going to be humour, and I also think humour is being explored a lot more in pop music in a fierce fucking way, and I also love being able to have the humour and also be like artistic seriousness and have them exist at the same time and have that be a beautiful collage of it… this past month for a second I was like, ‘OK, wait, I’m being a little too silly’.”
“I just don’t want to make a mockery of myself,” she admits. “I don’t want to be a parody act. I hate that word. Sometimes industry people call the Girl Of Your Dreams music video a parody, and I’m like, ‘baby, no’.”
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Eli points out that her humour has also had its uses while navigating the music industry behind the scenes, too.
“I thought I needed to show up to a big label meeting with all the big dogs, and really wear my business casual whatever or serious suit, serious face,” she shares.
“But how fabulous to be in those rooms [as myself]. And the humour sometimes can be used as a force to be like, ‘guys what the fuck are we doing here? Why are you doing this? Why are you exploiting me? Why are you exploiting tons of artists?’. It also challenges a lot of things that need to be unpacked within our systems, here in America, the crazy capitalistic music industry jargon and legal things that exist.”
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“It needs to be challenged by a chubby 25-year-old trans woman who is just making a mockery of some of this behaviour,” she says. “Girl. Oh my god.”
Having been “working at this forever”, Eli says she’s still a little in disbelief that her debut album is now within reach.
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“I thought I was just going to feel like every other release, like, kind of complex feelings of, like, ‘oh why am I not Beyoncé?’, but also, ’oh my god, amazing that anyone is listening to this’, which is the usual way it goes with the singles,” she admits.
“But I went to bed last night, and I had this, like, tickle in my tummy that felt like before Christmas. I was like, ’oh, it’s release week’. I was so excited.”
“In some ways… that feeling is similar to, like, when Yours Truly came out,” she admits, referring to the debut album by Ariana Grande, another of Eli’s personal idols. “That is kind of the epitome of a perfect pop album to me, a life-changing album.
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“When that came out, I was, like, on the Instagram, Twitter, social media, internet wave with her, I live for a roll-out on the internet. So, the idea of putting out an album? Living the album roll-out fantasy is, like… it’s crazy that it’s happening.”
And for the former Hannah Montana stan, her trademark 2000s-esque fedora has become like her version of the character’s transformative blonde wig, opening the door to her own op dreams.
“It really is,” she agrees, accompanied by another excited scream. “We were working with a stylist a couple of weeks ago, which is, like, a whole new thing for me, because usually it’s just me in my bedroom. And they were like, ‘girl, this fedora’. And I was like, ‘hold on!’.
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“You’ve got to fight for your art! Like, they don’t understand, this fedora represents a lot more than just an ugly hat. Like, girl…”
As soon as Lily Allen announced her return to the pop world with her fifth album West End Girl last week, it was clear the press was going to have a field day.
Lily has been a tabloid fixture since she first burst onto the pop scene more than 20 years ago, and at the height of her fame, was arguably as known for her headline-grabbing antics and personal drama as she was for her frank and confessional songwriting.
In the lead-up to her new album’s release, Lily described the collection as a “mixture of fact and fiction”, telling British Vogue it was “inspired by what went on in the relationship”, with its creation seeing her go through a mix of “confusion, sorrow, grief, helplessness”.
Lily also shared that the album was both written and recorded over an “intense 10-day period” in December 2024, the same month she announced she was taking a break from the spotlight to spend time in a residential facility to rest and focus on her mental health.
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A week after it was announced, West End Girl debuted on Friday, and as predicted, the album is truly jaw-dropping in its candour and frankness. Of course, no one but the two parties involved can really know how much artistic license was employed, but the album paints a picture of a woman whose life slowly starts to unravel when she somewhat hesitantly agrees to open her marriage to a man she’s uprooted her life and moved across an ocean for.
Lily Allen’s latest album West End Girl is quite possibly her most personal to date
Charlie Denis
The sense of dread and paranoia only grows as the story unfolds and our heroine’s husband appears to “move the goalposts” and repeatedly violate the terms of the “arrangement” that he’d set in place, ultimately taking its toll on her until she finds herself struggling to carry on.
“We had an arrangement, be discrete and don’t be blatant, there had to be payment, it had to be with strangers,” she sings on Madeline, an imagined conversation between herself and a woman she discovers her husband has been sleeping with.
On Relapse, Lily opens up about her struggles to hold onto her sobriety at the height of her personal issues, while Tennis sees her opening up about feeling like she is losing the man she loves to someone else.
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“I can’t get my head round how you’ve been playing tennis, if it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous,” she claims.
Then, there’s the much-discussed Pussy Palace, when she comes back to her marital bed to find “sheets pulled off the bed, strewn on the floor, long black hair, probably from the night before”.
“Duane Reade bag with the handles tied, sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside, hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken,” Lily continues, in one of her new album’s most-cited lyrics, before questioning if she’s “looking at a sex addict”.
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Lily Allen as depicted in the striking artwork for her new album West End Girl
Nieves González
Still, as revealing as these lyrics are, it would be remiss to reduce West End Girl to just its more sensationalised moments. For one thing, it’s much smarter than the straightforward “woman scorned” narrative that is inevitably going to be applied to an album with song titles like 4Chan Stan, Monogamummy and the aforementioned Pussy Palace.
As the name West End Girl highlights, this is Lily’s first musical release since she embarked on her career in theatre, appearing in productions like Hedda, The Pillowman and her Olivier-nominated turn in 2:22 A Ghost Story. It’s a fitting name for the album, too, as West End Girl feels like a piece of theatre in itself.
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A collection that’s undoubtedly intended to be enjoyed as a piece of work from start, the album runs roughly chronologically allowing the narrative of the central break-up to play out in real-time, with Lily also taking on numerous different characters (in a spoken-word interlude at the end of the first track, she recreates a phone call in which an unheard party first floats out the idea of an open relationship, while on Madeline, she adopts the titular character’s American accent to assure our protagonist that “lies are not something that I want to get caught up in”).
Early reviews have picked up on the fact that West End Girl bounces from genre to genre, encompassing everything from bossa nova to dancehall and flamenco to drum and bass, all sprinkled with the pure pop Lily best showcased on her second album It’s Not Me It’s You (which, incidentally, is a sentiment the Brit Award winner revisits on closing track Fruityloop).
As well as showing off Lily’s skills as a songwriter, the frequent genre-hopping mirrors the unpredictability and chaos of the album’s central narrative, and a feeling of not knowing what’s next. Meanwhile, some of West End Girl’s more salacious moments are also among its sweetest-sounding – few could have predicted that a song called Pussy Palace would actually be a devastating ballad more akin to Lily cuts like Three or Littlest Things than the claws-out pop she’s often associated with (it’s worth pointing out, too, that Lily has probably never been on in better voice than she is on West End Girl, which is saying something as her vocals have always been one of the more unfairly-underrated parts of her art).
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So, while the sordid details, irreverent lyrics and tea-spilling might be what have many listeners initially hitting play on this new release from Lily, those who stick around will find there’s so much more to enjoy on West End Girl than the surface-level tabloid drama that a release like this will invariably conjure up. The fact is, Lily has set a new bar not just when it comes to her own work, the break-up album in general.
Earlier this month, the third season of Monster began streaming, focussing on the horrific crimes of serial killer and grave-robber Ed Gein, whose actions inspired the murderous fictional characters in movies like The Texas Chainshaw Massacre, The Silence Of The Lambs and Psycho.
Following its debut, the show received criticism from many viewers over the way the show hinted at a link between the latter and Ed Gein, because of the way the actor chose to conceal his sexuality publicly in his lifetime.
Anthony Perkins on the set of Psycho
The Legacy Collection/THA/Shutterstock
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Speaking to TMZ, Anthony’s son Osgood Perkins (the director behind recent horror movies like Longlegs and The Monkey) claimed he “wouldn’t watch” the series “with a 10-foot pole”.
He also slammed streaming platforms for “glamourising” the true-crime genre and which he said is “increasingly devoid of context”, while lamenting that “the Netflix-isation of real pain” is “playing for the wrong team”.
Osgood Perkins
via Associated Press
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Oz told People magazine last year that the way his parents concealed his father’s sexuality from him when he was growing up was part of the inspiration for his movie Longlegs.
“Everybody knew it, even my brother and I theoretically knew it, but we were never given any language for it,” he claimed.
“The idea that [my mother] could make up – not make up, it’s not a lie – but it’s like a cover, a storytime…”
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He said that Longlegs became “the most baroque horror version of, ‘What’s going on in my household?’”, noting: “Every kid probably feels [that] to some greater or lesser extent. But if your father’s a public movie star and you don’t know who he is, that’s a little bit more profound.”
