Sideshow: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett kaput? It's just gossip
At 9 a.m. yesterday, we were mourning Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's reputedly perfect marriage, having read reports that the two actors had separated after 13 years.
At 9 a.m. yesterday, we were mourning Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's reputedly perfect marriage, having read reports that the two actors had separated after 13 years.
By 3 p.m., we were laughing with joy: It's all hooey!
We also shook with fury: How could such insanity happen?
Welcome to that most lucrative of cash crops, gossip mongering. In Touch Weekly got the ball rolling by citing an Unnamed Source who said the Smiths were kaput.
Why? We screeched, pulling out what's left of our hair.
The blogosphere had the perfect answer: Jada has been stepping out with her pal Jennifer Lopez's ex, Marc Anthony. It was a perfectly symmetrical answer since it also would have explained why J.Lo and M.Ant broke up.
Radio station the Beat of Philly (100.3 FM) fueled further suspicions when it reported on its website that Will had escorted an Unknown Woman to his gig Sunday night at the Robin Hood Dell East (he presented the Pioneer Award to Lady B).
Jada's rep, Karynne Tencer, vociferously denied a Jada affair.
"Everything about Jada and Marc Anthony is false," she said. She wouldn't comment on the Smiths' marriage. But by the end of the workday the Smiths released a statement.
"Although we are reluctant to respond to these types of press reports," they said, "the rumors circulating about our relationship are completely false. We are still together, and our marriage is intact."
Al Sharpton to MSNBC
It's official: After weeks of idle speculation, MSNBC says it has hired civil rights leader and minister the Rev. Al Sharpton to host its daily 6 p.m. news show, Politics Nation, starting Monday.
"I am very happy and honored to join the MSNBC team as we collectively try to get America to 'Lean Forward,' " Sharpton said in a statement, referring to MSNBC's slogan. "It is a natural extension of my lifework and growth." Sharpton replaces Cenk Uygur.
Winehouse was clean
Amy Winehouse's parents say toxicology tests show that the late singer did not have any illicit substances in her system when she died July 23 at 27. So how did the blues singer, who for years had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, meet her untimely end? Amy's dad and mum, Mitch and Janis Winehouse, have speculated that their daughter died from alcohol withdrawal when she tried to kick booze cold turkey. (Tox results show there was some alcohol in her system.) Results of the formal inquest into Amy's death are due in October.
Tony to honor Amy
In other news Winehouse, MTV reports that American singing legend Tony Bennett will pay a musical tribute to Amy at the Video Music Awards on Sunday.
Today in EntBiz news
Rent actress Daphne Rubin-Vega has been cast to star as Stella opposite Blair Underwood's Stanley in a new Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
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Former Govinator Arnold Schwarzenegger will make his return to the Biz in October, when he'll be in Belen, N.M., to shoot the western Last Stand, says the Valencia County News-Bulletin.
Babies are nice
Remember Bennifer 2.0? They're back in the news: Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, both 39, on Tuesday confirmed that they are expecting their third child, using the word thrilled to express their feelings. The couple have two girls, Violet, 5½, and Seraphina, 2½.
People mag has revealed that Manhunter and CSI star William Petersen, 58, and wife Gina Cirone welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, via surrogate July 5 in Los Angeles.
Monroe shocker!
Megan Fox is having the Marilyn Monroe tattoo on her forearm removed! The Transformers castoff tells fashion mag Amica that Marilyn impedes her psychic growth because the Misfits star was "a negative person, she was disturbed, bipolar."
Tidbits 'n' pieces
Real Housewives of Atlanta star Lisa Wu-Hartwell and her NFL hub, Ed Hartwell, have split up after six years, the New York Daily News says. . . . Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has adopted a puppy named Beth from a shelter, the royals' peeps say. . . . Richard Branson says actor Kate Winslet and her two kids, Mia, 10, and Joe, 7, saved a number of his houseguests, including his 90-year-old mum, from certain injury or death by pulling them out of a fire that consumed the Virgin Group mogul's Caribbean home on Monday.