On Ciara Miller, Kelsea Ballerini and More
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This week, my friend Louis Staples wrote a fantastic article for Rolling Stone about the precarious situation that some of the “Real Housewives” franchises find themselves in amid a few flukey controversies. It was a nice surprise to find that he quoted this very newsletter in his piece, resulting in a bunch of new friends here — if you’re new here, thank you for signing up and welcome!
Other reasons I’m celebrating today are that my brother snagged us tickets to Beyoncé for this summer, and I surpassed 50K followers on Twitter this morning! With so many bleak things happening around us, it’s important to celebrate your wins. So, here I am celebrating.
Below you’ll find a bunch of great articles I loved reading this week, some show, movie and podcast recommendations and a diatribe in defense of Ciara from “Summer House,” who gets an inordinate amount of undeserved hate on social media that I very much disagree with.
Enjoy!
Read
“Andy Cohen Still Loves The Housewives” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“YouTube Made Emma Chamberlain A Star. Now She’s Leaving It Behind.” by David Marchese (The New York Times Magazine)
“Inside Tracy Anderson’s Cutthroat Fitness Empire: Legal Threats, Paranoia, and Trainers Who Say Their Bodies Were ‘Breaking Apart’” by Katie Warren (Insider)
“What Happened to Glossier” by Elizabeth Segran (Fast Company)
“She Built A Following As Taylor Swift’s Doppelgänger. Then The Swifties Came After Her.” by (Rolling Stone)
“How Usher Became the New King of Vegas” by Hunter Harris (GQ Hype)
Listen
Kelsea Ballerini on “Call Her Daddy”
I recommended Kelsea’s flawless new EP, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, which I still cannot stop listening to, in last week’s newsletter, and this week she sat down with Alex Cooper for a tell-all “Call Her Daddy” moment that absolutely delivered. After the teaser dropped but before the full interview came out, Kelsea’s ex Morgan Evans released a statement saying, “It’s really sad to see this person […] saying things that aren’t reality and that leave out what really happened.” As if he wasn’t the first to share “his side” in the form of a song that he released before their divorce was even finalized? Whatever, dude.
To add insult to injury, a story appeared in Page Six the day Kelsea’s episode of “CHD” came out that claimed she cheated on Morgan with one of the Chainsmokers, effectively refuting her side of the story through anonymous sources. How convenient! I’m all for getting both sides of the story, but the timing and hypocrisy of his protests are so transparent. Kelsea has been super underrated throughout her career, though, so all of this mainstream tabloid-adjacent attention coming on the back of her best project yet is only going bolster her career even more. It’s giving Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett, TBH — and look how that went. Listen to Kelsea Ballerini on “Call Her Daddy” here.
P!nk on “Table Manners”
Pink also released an album last week and, while I’m still deciding what I think about it beyond the incredible Fred Again.. collab “TRUSTFALL,” her appearance on the season premiere of Jessie Ware’s podcast this week was an absolute delight. Hearing her shoot the shit with Jessie and her mom over dinner about parenthood and her career and performing made me laugh so much. Listen to their chat here.
Watch
“Sharper” (Apple TV+)
Ever since the above “7 Rings”-soundtracked trailer for this dropped, I’ve been excited to watch this one — and I fucking loved it. The cast (Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith) is fantastic across the board. It’s a thriller in a slow-burn kind of way, and just when you think you have it figured out, a new twist comes along and turns everything upside down. The ending could’ve been better, but all-in-all, this is totally worth the watch.
“Full Swing” (Netflix) & “Make or Break” (Apple TV+)
I’m kind of in my sports documentary era, and I'm not mad about it. Following the great tennis docuseries “Break Point” and HBO Max’s awesome Shaq series are these two new releases: “Full Swing,” from the same “Drive to Survive” team as “Break Point,” follows the 2022 golf tour as everything is in flux as the Saudi-backed LIV tour threatens the future of the PGA. I love this team’s style of focusing each episode on a specific personality or two while also injecting some stakes in terms of the actual results on tour.
“Make or Break,” which follows the World Sports League (WSL)’s 2022 season, returned for a second season, and I find it fascinating and super well-done. I didn’t know much about professional surfing before watching this one, but there are some truly compelling stories here that are worth paying attention to.
Bravo, Bravo, Fucking Bravo
Ciara Miller made her first appearance of the “Summer House” season on this week’s episode and, while live-tweeting the ep, I realized how great Ciara has been for the show and posted about it. I knew that she was controversial online — between her tumultuous relationship with Austen, feuding with fan favorites Lindsay and Danielle, being friends with Hannah despite her villain status in the world of Bravo and even her lightning rod of a messy room, there are plenty of reasons for some viewers not to support everything she does — but the replies asking me if I was being sarcastic or joking or delusional struck me as… charged. And also indicative of the narrow view some people have about what makes for a good reality star.
First of all, you don’t need to like someone for them to be adept at the art of making reality TV. For the record, I love Ciara both on the show and as a person based on first-hand interactions with her. She’s funny and gracious and always engaging. Either way, though, she has pretty objectively put in the work during her two-going-on-three seasons of “Summer House” and two seasons of “Winter House.”
Let’s recap: Fresh off of working as a nurse during the beginning months of the pandemic (!!!), was the only new addition in the show’s lockdown season, completely holding her own as she let Luke down and survived her best friend on the show’s complete fall from grace with most of the rest of the house; she struck up the first high-profile cross-show romance on Bravo with Austen (starting a trend, by the way) that provided endless dramatic material for multiple seasons (perhaps to a fault, but it was fun to watch for a while); while regrettable, her wine glass throw was the most-anticipated moment on “Summer House” last season. She delivers great confessionals, serves looks during nights out, hooks up with people on the show and isn’t afraid to get emotional on-camera. So what if she spends a lot of time in bed? As long as she occasionally gets up, I’m good with it.
All of that in addition to being the first Black cast member on the show and paving the way for more necessary diversity on the cast in subsequent seasons. She and Mya also provided the single most profound discussion about race to ever happen on Bravo on “Summer House” last season. Not only is she good at her job, but her continued presence on the show is also important.
I feel like a lot of the criticism she gets is a result of her prolonged fixation on Austen which, okay. Fine. But who among us hasn’t been hung up for too long on someone who didn’t deserve us? And were you really mad at her? He was the one who continually fucked up in that relationship — not Ciara. The other big point of contention is her making things physical with Danielle last season, which is completely fair. But she has expressed her regret for her actions, and Danielle has since forgiven her. If she can move on, you can too.
Anyway, I said what I said. Ciara has more than proven her worth as a reality star, and I’m so glad she’s still around on “Summer House.” It’s one thing to not like someone, but it’s another to completely disregard how much they’ve given us as viewers. If you’re doing that with Ciara, perhaps it’s time you ask yourself why.
Self-Promotion
Lauren and Mariah Smith on “We Should Talk”
The first of two episodes of my podcast this week featured Lauren and Mariah Smith, who are two of the three sister co-hosts of “Smith Sisters Live,” which is a daily radio show on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM channel, Radio Andy. They’re both TV writers who used to work at “Watch What Happens Live,” and I absolutely live for their pop culture takes, so it was fun to hear about their careers, relationships with Andy, “Housewives” thoughts and more. Watch above or listen here!
Kyle Cooke on “We Should Talk”
This week’s second episode featured an interview with Kyle Cooke from “Summer House.” We recorded this before the second episode aired, so we didn’t discuss what he said about Carl at that group dinner, but we did get deep into the problems they’re facing in their friendship, how he sees Lindsay playing a role and a lot more. Watch above or listen here!
Currently
I’m writing this while en route to Austin for the weekend with a few college friends. Nobody cares to hear details about travel gone wrong, but let’s just say it’s been a travel day from hell! Looking forward to a weekend full of tacos and margaritas and praying I get tickets to see the Jonas Brothers on Broadway next month. Oh, and listening to the new Reneé Rapp song.