It seems strange to Jim Giaccone that he is 60 this year. He was 40 when his 43-year-old brother Joe, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, died on 9/11. “I’m 17 years older than he was when he was killed. The math just freaked me out,” Jim told The Daily Beast. “When I was 40 and he was 43, he was my older brother. Now he’s stuck at 43. I’m 60. It freaks me out he was so young.” The Giaccone family has to date received no remains of Joe. Not […]
Tim Teeman
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Max Giaccone remembers the night before 9/11 vividly. His father Joe was with him at home, quoting from Pink Panther movies. “A lot of my memories are jumbled of my dad. Prior to that night, unfortunately I remember not a whole lot,” Giaccone told The Daily Beast. “I’m not sure if my mind is blocking it out. I remember good things. I remember my dad being there for every baseball game I had after school. I remember my dad tapping along to music as we drove to and from my baseball games. I remember him having a glass of wine on […]
A trans friend from Kabul recently told Ahmad Qais Munhazim, “There is hope in waking up tomorrow, but I am afraid I would be killed tonight.” “Being in love is the most beautiful feeling in this ugly war. Qais, I have fallen in love with someone,” a queer friend from Kabul recently texted Munhazim. “It is nice to wake up not thinking about the war but waiting for his text. I fear what if Taliban kill my lover. What would I wake for?” The perilous situation facing LGBTQ Afghans now living under Taliban rule didn’t simply emerge in recent days, Munhazim, […]
The standing ovation, the whooping and cheering happened before a word was spoken. Pass Over opened tonight, August 22 (until Oct 10 at the August Wilson Theatre), the first release on a pent-up Broadway itching to make up for a lost year. Here we all were in what looked like a full house, and it felt momentous and strange. It had been so long, and it was so good to be back, but the pandemic is ongoing. Whether theatre can fully return in the social and scientific hinterland we find ourselves is still an open question, and one that will be […]
The young Bree Fram was obsessed with dinosaurs—the stegosaurus, to be exact—and becoming a paleontologist. (Her elder daughter Kathryn, 12, has inherited this fascination.) Then, when Bree was about 9 or 10, a friend of Fram’s dragged her “kicking and screaming” to watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. “And suddenly I wanted to be Geordi La Forge and make the warp drives go,” Fram tells The Daily Beast, laughing. Now Lieutenant Colonel Bree Fram is an active duty astronautical engineer in the U.S. Space Force, currently assigned to the Pentagon to lead space policy integration for the Department […]
Murray Bartlett and I spoke moments after I saw him take surely the most beatific crap ever taken on television. In both blatancy and lyricism it sets a new on-screen turd standard. Moments later, his White Lotus character, the highly strung hotel manager Armond, apparently died in a bathtub after being stabbed by rich-boy guest Shane (Jake Lacy), into whose suitcase Armond had squatted down in a gleeful act of righteous vengeance against the kind of obnoxious white privilege that Mike White’s comedy drama has been skewering and satirizing these last six weeks. “Are you traumatized?” Bartlett asks, roaring with laughter. […]
Somewhere in Cindy Adams’ Park Avenue penthouse, there is an intercom. Today it does not appear to be working, so the queen of New York gossip must ask her housekeeper Nazalene to bring us two glasses of chilled white wine. She asks me not to say what specific furnishings the penthouse contains for fear of attracting thieves, so I will simply note that I sit next to a jug of pink feathers. There are swagged drapes, intricately carved cabinets, fine art, sculptures, and plush, overstuffed sofas. This penthouse was once Doris Duke’s; Adams bought it in 1997 from Duke’s lawyer, “all […]
A few months into the pandemic, the reopening of theater a depressingly far-off and uncertain prospect, this reporter asked producers what they thought theater would look like when it returned. One common theme emerged: At least in the short term, some said, one should expect productions to make audiences happy. That wouldn’t mean dramas without drama, or relentless cheer, but after everything people had been through, the thinking was there had to be some emphatic on-stage uplift when seats were occupied again. Merry Wives (to Sept. 18), the first Public Theater “Free Shakespeare in the Park” production to play in two […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Is Virginia Roberts Giuffre about to sue Prince Andrew? Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accuses Prince Andrew of having sex with her on three occasions when she was 17 years old while being trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, may be about to sue the British royal in a New York court, according to the Mail on Sunday. Source link
The strange thing was the politesse in the articles that followed. “The f-word” or “the f-slur,” over and over again. It was only recently, we read in an interview in the U.K. Sunday Times, that Matt Damon realized “the f-slur”—ah, how gentle and unassuming it sounds—was wrong and bad. And this was thanks to his daughter who had to write a “treatise” on it to show him that “faggot” was bad. In 2021. To a Hollywood actor, who must work around LGBTQ people, who really can’t have been living under a social evolutionary rock all this time. Well, apparently Damon has […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Prince Charles in ‘access capitalism’ controversy Ben Elliot, nephew of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and the chairman of the Tory party in the U.K., has been accused of running an “access capitalism” service, allegedly trading off his connection to his aunt’s husband, Prince Charles. Source link
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Everyone has a view on what will be in Harry’s memoir How many books is Prince Harry writing? Just one, he insists, contrary to the Daily Mail reporting Saturday it was four—including, the Mail claimed ominously, one to the published after the queen’s death. Source link
At the cavernous Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall, Ann Dowd has not entirely given up elements of the spirit of Aunt Lydia—as any Handmaid’s Tale fan, as one of my theater buddies was, will soon realize. Dowd is the only person on stage in a commandingly performed but puzzlingly composed and paced remolding of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People by Robert Icke (to Aug. 8). Here, Icke has updated to the piece to the present day, its setting the small American town of Weston Falls dependent on the tourist income generated by its spa, and whose water supply may be […]
At one time, New York City’s Meatpacking District was all the things our Seven Deadly Sins guide excitedly told us it was: industrial, edgy, sexually transgressive, with the indisputably brilliant Florent feeding every demographic that passed its portal. Oddly, the façade of Florent is one of the few visible ghosts of those times in the cleaned-up, moneyed, boozy foody streets of now, and even more oddly our guide couldn’t have been close to being born when the area he was so enamored with was as steamy as he was eulogizing. On a recent evening, watching this inventive piece of storytelling and […]
Three days after its members were involved in a tragic accident at a Florida Pride event, the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus remains “in shock,” its president Justin Knight has told The Daily Beast. On Saturday, members of the chorus were preparing to march in the Stonewall Pride Parade in Wilton Manors, FL. One of their number, Fred Johnson Jr. who had ailments preventing him from marching, was set to drive in the parade in a white pickup truck. But Johnson, 77, seemingly lost control of the vehicle, striking fellow chorus members James “Jim” Fahy, 75, Gerry Vroegh, 67, and chorus […]
Warning: contains descriptions of events some readers may find upsetting. As you read this, Brandon Wolf might be eating ice cream for breakfast. Every June 12th for the last five years, he carves out time in the morning to “recharge” before preparing to attend the memorial events marking the 2016 massacre at Orlando’s LGBTQ Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed, two of them close friends, and where Wolf himself was present and escaped death. (Three days ago, the Senate passed a bill designating Pulse as a national memorial site.) Since the massacre—at the time, pre-Las Vegas in 2017, the deadliest […]
Here’s one thing you can do, indeed should do, to cast a real downer over brunch or sunbathing this weekend. When someone brightly greets you with a “Happy Pride!,” answer, as witheringly as your inner Dame Maggie Smith will allow, “Is it?” What else can one say after this first-week-of-Pride-month, featuring social media feeds dripping with rainbow emojis, individual and corporate smug self-congratulation, emails advertising every product under the sun made rainbow-colored, and pat messages of empowerment? Yet what is the point—apart from self-interest, self-promotion, and the easiest kind of cheerleading—of this orgy of pathetic virtue signaling when LGBTQ rights, and […]
Keith McNally, the famed 69-year-old restaurateur of such hotspots as Balthazar, Pastis, the Minetta Tavern, and Café Luxembourg, is planning his return to New York City next month, having recovered from a life-imperiling battle with COVID in his native England. In a candid interview with The Daily Beast, he says that the pandemic almost broke his restaurant empire, but that plans are advancing to build branches of the Minetta Tavern in Washington, D.C., and Pastis in Miami. “After divorce, a stroke, and COVID destroying 75 percent of the finances of my restaurants, it’s crucial I make money,” McNally told The Daily […]
The ACLU has so far filed two lawsuits against a panoply of anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ bills passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures. On Tuesday, it filed a lawsuit on behalf of four transgender youth and their families as well as two doctors, challenging a law passed in April that meant Arkansas became the first American state to ban the provision of gender-affirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth, despite every major medical association speaking out in support of the treatments. In April, as reported by The Daily Beast, Arkansas’ legislature voted to override Governor Asa Hutchinson’s veto of House Bill 1570, which bans […]
Adam is 14. This August he will begin public high school in Tennessee, and he is already “really stressed” about which bathroom he will be allowed to use. Last Friday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed HB 1233 into law, which denies transgender students like Adam access to the school bathroom and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. The new law also means a student, parent or employee could sue a Tennessee school “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” if they share space with a trans person in a restroom or locker room. The student bathroom bill was one […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. At the beginning of a ballroom scene in Pose, indeed in the brief opening titles and its exploding pink graphic, the call goes up: “The category is…” The phrase recurred to me this week thinking about the various grooves the royal family, and its talkative Californian dissidents Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, inhabit. In olden times, we called them “interests,” and the royals pursued them dutifully, cutting ribbons, opening […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Queen’s first cousin reportedly boasts about closeness with Putin—and a sweet deal Prince Michael of Kent reportedly has been trading on both his royal status and his access to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an investigation published today by the U.K. Sunday Times, Prince Michael and his adviser boasted to undercover reporters of his connections to Putin and the “Putinistas” around him at the Kremlin. Source link
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. If you keep a royal scorecard—and really, everyone needs a hobby—a shocking thing has taken place in recent days. Prince William and Kate Middleton have seemed, for the first time ever, more interesting than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Whether this is a blip, and the glamorous California controversy-magnets are planning a front-page coup de théâtre, remains to be seen. The Oprah interview, its fallout, and the various dramas […]
The Biden administration is preparing to directly confront the rash of anti-LGBT, and specifically anti-trans bills proliferating in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy organization. Separately, the Department of Justice has told The Daily Beast it will “fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals,” giving hope to campaigners that the DOJ is preparing to challenge in the courts the legality of bills that have been introduced—and some passed—in a number of states, outlawing transgender youth’s access to health care and sports. The White House’s move and DOJ declaration follow President […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Harry and Meghan bio ‘Finding Freedom’ returns for dishy second edition Prepare for yet more internecine royal warfare in a matter of months. But really, when does it ever end? Source link
Willow Breshears says she has been contacted by several young transgender people in Arkansas over the last few days. “One of them said he was going to kill himself if the bill passed,” Breshears, an 18-year-old community organizer for the Center for Artistic Revolution and a founder of the Young Transwomen’s Project, told The Daily Beast of the now-notorious House Bill 1570. “That has weighed heavily on me. I was at a loss for words when he said it. It really showed me how important gender-affirming care is.” In early April, Arkansas became the first state in America to ban the […]
Prince Andrew spoke publicly for the first time since stepping back from his role as a senior royal, revealing that the queen had told him that the death of Prince Philip had left “a huge void” in her life. Andrew stepped back from public life in 2019, and has not performed any official royal duties in the wake of criticism over his friendship with late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a candid interview he gave the BBC on the subject, and his lack of co-operation with American authorities. On Sunday, where he and Prince Edward thanked members of royal estate staff after a […]
Mayor Bill de Blasio—so tall, really a human redwood—was there, speaking about the moment being a new dawn for theater in New York City. Indeed, theater was “back,” he told the cameras. The line of people he came to greet waiting to see the first performance of Blindness at the Daryl Roth Theatre off Union Square was collectively, properly masked, but still a line, still packed closely together, reminding this critic that whatever measures being taken inside theaters, the line outside a theater right now remains just as it always was—an expectant, kettled huddle. “At some point, you just make a […]
Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas’ Republican governor, has vetoed a bill that would have criminalized affirming health care for trans youth, calling it an example of “vast government overreach.” The majority Republican Senate had voted in favor of HB 1570 last week, 28 votes to 7—making it the first bill to pass in America outlawing health care access and treatment for trans teenagers. The Arkansas General Assembly can vote to overturn Hutchinson’s veto. If passed, the bill would prevent young trans people from accessing health care and insurance coverage for gender-affirming care, and would have outlawed gender-confirming hormone treatment or surgery to trans […]
A college friend once jokingly asked Paul Schindler, “Were you reading Time magazine when you were in first grade?” Schindler chuckled recalling this benign jibe about his lifelong love of inked news on paper. He has just retired after 25 years working as the editor in chief of New York City’s LGBTQ newspaper, Gay City News (previously known as LGNY). Schindler is not completely leaving his keyboard to mothballs. He is still reporting for the paper and has written around half a dozen pieces since retiring on Dec. 31, most recently about Roberta Degnore, close friend of Sam Wagstaff, art curator […]
Imagine Dallas’ J.R. Ewing—that cackling, whisky tumbler-holding pinnacle of television villainy—not being played by Larry Hagman. It almost happened. Before Hagman’s successful audition, the actor Robert Foxworth was offered the part of J.R., Dallas creator David Jacobs recently recalled during an interview with The Daily Beast. It wasn’t J.R. that had percolated in Jacobs’ mind first when he created the CBS saga, which ran from 1978 to 1991. It was the character of Pam, later played by Victoria Principal—and the show’s original Romeo and Juliet storyline between her and Bobby (Patrick Duffy). “Pam wanted the house with the white picket fence. […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Royal family appoints “diversity czar” The royal family is to appoint a “diversity czar,” the Mail on Sunday reports. This Huh!-only-now-you-think-this-might-be-a-good idea? appointment is being made with a view to “modernizing the monarchy,” the Mail on Sunday said, adding that it was an acknowledgment that “more needs to be done to champion minorities’ rights.” Source link
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) has a thing about genitalia. Around the time of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation process, he told Fox News, “If my Democratic friends want to turn it into an intergalactic freak show and bring back the protesters with the genitalia-shaped headgear, I can’t stop ’em. I just hope they won’t.” On Wednesday, what lies between our legs was on his mind again, as he tried to clarify his disgust with the Equality Act—the proposed bill that would protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination under federal law. If 70% of Americans, including 50% of Republicans, really do support […]
The contemplation of suicide, blatant racism, and a family of “trapped,” emotionally stunted snobs: nobody expected Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey to be as dramatic as it was, or as grim. It was less a night for popcorn and low-stakes royal dish, and more one for stricken looks of surprise. One bombshell and within-palace-walls horror story followed another, one numbing thud after another. The opening revelation that Kate Middleton had made Meghan cry, not the other way round—as had been previously reported—was a relatively innocent aperitif. This grand guignol was just getting started. Harry and Meghan told […]
Patrick J. Adams, Meghan Markle’s co-star in the TV show Suits, has condemned the royal family as “obscene,” and the “racist, slanderous vitriol” of the media in a powerful series of tweets. Adams’ passionate defense of Meghan came after it was announced that Buckingham Palace had begun an investigation into bullying allegations made against the Duchess by former Palace staff, just days before the broadcast of Meghan’s much-hyped interview with Oprah Winfrey on CBS this Sunday night. In a statement, Meghan said the allegations were part of a “calculated smear campaign.” Adams said that it was “OBSCENE that the Royal Family, […]
I have played this 9-second video 16 times, and I think yes, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is absolutely, rightly telling me to wear a mask to do my part in closing down the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a sadly necessary message: Check out NBC reporter Sam Brock’s video of the maskless shoppers and staff he found in a Naples, Florida supermarket. And then, hmmm, there’s Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s uncompromising yet gentle eye contact, his genially butch monotone, and the way he just snaps that sleek black mask on at the end—well, it’s like Alan Ladd has just ridden into town as […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Joe Biden’s royal appointment Joe Biden will meet the queen and other royals this summer, and we’re betting they’re looking forward to it way, way more than when the bombastic House of Trump descended on Buckingham Palace in June 2019. Source link
For someone who is allegedly “muzzled,” Sen. Josh Hawley sure talks a lot. In relentlessly whiny media appearances, he keeps telling us how censored he is from saying anything, as he keeps saying exactly that on mass media platforms. Just last night, he was wailing away on The Ingraham Angle. The most definitely not-muzzled Hawley wants you to know he is a victim of “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” because people have asked him lots of very, very, very mean questions about his role in inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, his fist raised to the Trump-supporting mob. Here is what […]
The joy was audible in Paulo Batista’s voice. The 36-year-old from San Diego, California, wants to join the Navy. The significant obstacle that was former president Donald Trump’s ban on trans service people was now gone, revoked by an executive order issued by Joe Biden’s administration. “I’m just ecstatic today. I feel like I am walking on clouds,” Batista told The Daily Beast. “It’s a new…” He started laughing again, saying he had been with his “ecstatic, very supportive” colleagues at the property management company where he works when he heard the news. “I’m just speechless. Before, having the ban meant […]
Montana legislators are preparing to decide whether the state should discriminate against its young trans population. If passed into law, HB 112 would prevent interscholastic athletes from participating in athletic activities consistent with their gender identity, while HB 113 would enshrine an effective ban on physical and mental health care for trans youth, including banning the use of puberty blockers, while punishing and fining doctors who treat young trans people. Both bills were introduced by Rep. John Fuller, who has not returned The Daily Beast’s requests for comment. “Fuller says he finds it wrong for young people to go through these […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Harry and Meghan quit Twitter and Facebook President Trump has been ejected from multiple online platforms after inciting the Capitol MAGA riot, resulting in the deaths of five people. Source link
It was a familiar swing-set of an LGBTQ year: high highs, low lows, and the ever-present animus of the Trump administration, a bigotry which Trump and his gaslighting lackeys, like Richard Grenell, insisted was not bigotry. On one side of history was Pete Buttigieg, the first out LGBTQ candidate to garner delegates in his impressive bid to become the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Now Biden’s pick to be transportation secretary, Buttigieg has made history again, as the first out gay man to be nominated to a Cabinet role. One bum note: Chasten Buttigieg will not be First Gentleman. Yet. Then there was […]
Had I heard of the alleged gay sex party “full of Broadway stars that you love and adore.” This reporter had not. “They get together and have sex with newcomers,” Mark Peikert said. “This is second-hand information, I have not been invited myself. At the end of the night, there are party gifts. So, one bottom [a sex partner who prefers getting penetrated] reaches into the bowl of gifts and plucks out his prize. ‘King Lear tickets!’ he shouted.” Peikert laughed—a hearty roar, really. “Imagine that. You’re a bottom and you’ve gotten fucked at a group sex party. And now you […]
The staff at Blackstones salon in New York City’s East Village watched in fascinated horror Thursday afternoon as the slick brown trickles of maybe hair dye, maybe makeup, maybe fake tan trickled from Rudy Giuliani’s sideburns. “We saw it,” Blackstones colorist and educator Patti O’Gara told The Daily Beast. “It was a collective ‘Ewwww.’ We were like, ‘It’s just so gross and it won’t stop dripping.’” Giuliani was holding forth at his latest low-on-legal-evidence, high-on-decibels election rigging press conference for President Trump—this one at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C.—but his huffing, puffing, and democracy-imperiling lies were […]
Prince William secretly battled coronavirus, even struggling to breathe—but kept his April ordeal a secret because he didn’t wish to alarm the public. The Sun reported Sunday that William, 38—who is second in line to the British throne—contracted the virus after his father Prince Charles and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson both fell ill with coronavirus. Johnson became so sick he was placed in the intensive care unit of a London hospital. A source told The Sun, “William was hit pretty hard by the virus—it really knocked him for six. At one stage he was struggling to breathe, so obviously everyone […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox on Sunday. Thomas Markle: “I could die tomorrow” Meghan Markle’s father Thomas Markle says he wants her court case against Associated Newspapers—over the Mail on Sunday publishing details of a private letter she sent to him—to happen “as quickly as possible.” Markle wrote in a statement related to his daughter’s case: “I am a realist and I could die tomorrow. The sooner this case takes place the better… I have had […]
Who would you expect to drive policy and public opinion when it comes to child hunger and poverty? A government, whose job it is to protect and care for its citizens, or a professional football player, whose job is it to score goals? In Britain, the answer is the professional footballer. “Marcus: The Pride of Britain” the Mirror’s front page read Monday, revealing the footballer Marcus Rashford had been given one of their “Pride of Britain” awards. Rashford, a forward for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team, has led a hugely successful campaign, starting last spring, to […]
Betty Buckley was out walking her dog one evening a few weeks ago—near her ranch, west of Fort Worth in her native Texas—when she saw a neighbor’s Trump/Pence sign. “In a fit of pique, I ripped it off the fence and kept walking,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway star told The Daily Beast. Buckley then called her longtime assistant and close friend, Cathy Brighenti, who told her that she shouldn’t have done what she did, and that the homeowner would likely know she was the perpetrator. “So, on the way home I picked up the sign, and put it back.” Buckley laughed. […]
There is no need, if you are a Trump supporter, to respond to this. Jog on. Your gaslighting and lies are better spread elsewhere. Whatever you claim about a day of clouds and rain (“It’s so sunny”) is usually the opposite of truth; whatever insult you level, baselessly, about a political opponent is only ever true of President Donald Trump or his allies. Up is down, round is square, and the most homophobic and transphobic president of modern times is really a gay savior. His daughter Tiffany Trump addressed a “TrumpPride” event (this one over the weekend in Florida), claiming this […]
The pioneering journalist Monica Roberts, whose influential blog TransGriot reports on the murders of trans women alongside other news of importance to the trans community, has died, according to multiple sources on social media and news outlets. The award winning Roberts was an inspiration to many LGBTQ activists, campaigners and journalists, who took to Twitter and Facebook to express their grief and shock Thursday night. In a Facebook post, the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition wrote: “It is with great sadness that the BTAC family has received notice of the passing of Monica Roberts, our sister, aunt, and friend. We should have […]
Get ready for The Real Royals of Montecito. Or maybe not. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have denied a report in the British Sun that they are planning to film a Netflix reality show which would have followed their lives and work for three months. A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan told the Independent: “The Duke and Duchess are not taking part in any reality shows.” The Sun originally reported that a source said the show would “be tasteful. They want to give people a glimpse into their lives.” Meghan, the source said, wanted viewers to see “the real her.” “They […]
How fast the Supreme Court nominee talk began, with the monumental life that precipitated it surreally relegated in its shadow. It’s there in Donald Trump’s creepy, elated stump speeches, and Mitch McConnell’s pathetic justifications for his own hypocrisy; in the liberal scramble to avert their idea of disaster; and in the glassy eyes of pundits who rack up their appearance fees chatting ever so amiably about the violations of our democracy. It’s there in Meghan McCain’s foghorn petulance which makes The View so often unwatchable. Everyone is in on the game, ghouls at a poisonous feast. Source link
It is, allegedly, the last time we will see Richard Nelson’s Apple family during the pandemic. How are the liberal, white, arty, upstate-dwelling American upper-middle classes feeling as lockdown eases and the election approaches? The last of a trio of plays, Incidental Moments of the Day suggests the answer is, as confined and confused as the rest of us. Here again, discussing, needling, laughing, and consoling are siblings Barbara (Maryann Plunkett), Richard (Jay O. Saunders), and Jane (Sally Murphy), with Marian (Laila Robins) mostly absent out on a date, and Jane’s partner Tim (Stephen Kunken), an actor turned restaurant manager, away […]
A pool boy allegedly fucked his wife as he sat, watched, and enjoyed every second. For such a virulently anti-gay, Christian conservative, props to Jerry Falwell Jr. for at least serving up a note of pure Jackie Collins camp in the scandal that has led to his reported resignation as president of Liberty University, although on Monday night he claimed to be on “indefinite leave.” “Becki [Falwell’s wife] and I developed an intimate relationship, and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Giancarlo Granda told Reuters of his affair with the couple. Now 29, Granda told Reuters that these […]
More than once in our conversation, the Broadway producer Brian Moreland qualifies an optimistic thought with, “I know that sounds very Pollyanna of me.” Moreland, one of the few Black producers working on Broadway, is hopeful for not just the healthy, post-pandemic return of Broadway, but also for a renewed kind of commercial theater which looks, sounds, and feels more diverse. “I feel there’s change in the air,” he told The Daily Beast. The lead producer of upcoming productions of Charles Randolph-Wright’s play Blue (which had been set to open at the Apollo Theater in May) and Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of […]
When Meghan Markle arrived in Prince Harry’s life, one senior royal reportedly referred to her as “Harry’s showgirl.” Another royal family member said, “She comes with a lot of baggage.” In the second extract from the unofficial Harry and Meghan biography Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, the authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand reveal the alleged prejudice Meghan faced on entering the royal family, as well as her strained relationship with sister-in-law Kate Middleton. Meghan, the book claims, “would agree with the assessment” that she and Kate Middleton are “not the best of […]
Princess Beatrice’s top-secret Friday wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi became a little less secret Saturday with the publication of photographs showing the bride and groom emerging from the church, and another with the Queen and Prince Philip smiling at them both. One photograph shows Beatrice, 31, and Mapelli Mozzi, 35, exiting a flower-bedecked All Saint’s Chapel in Windsor Great Park. The mystery of what Beatrice—who is ninth in line to the throne—wore for the ceremony was also solved, taking “something old” and “something borrowed” to another level. Her wedding dress was a vintage Peau De Soie taffeta dress, in shades of […]
Of course Reverend Troy Perry is a preacher. He sounds like one. His voice booms smoothly. His Southern accent remains in place, despite years of Californian living. More than one sentence ends with a “And I will tell you…” On July 27th, Perry will celebrate his 80th birthday, and there’s a long, dramatic life to look back on which at its heart is about how one gay man who cherished his belief and faith in God did not believe—as he was constantly told—that God did not love him because he was gay. And to prove it, he created a church all […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox every Sunday. Whatever the state of the relationship between Prince Harry and Prince William, two things are most certainly not helping: royal “sources,” and an expanse of miscommunication-facilitating ocean between them. The apparent fraternal conflict is being exacerbated by a wealth of new claims about the circumstances by which Harry and wife Meghan Markle ended up quitting their roles as “senior royals.” Source link
Is the new picture of the Loch Ness Monster really of the Loch Ness Monster, or of a large fish? Is it not a creature at all? Is the photograph real or a fake, as experts speaking to The Daily Beast—and as Twitter—think? Is it doctored or Photoshopped? The kinds of questions about Steve Challice’s image of whatever-the-hell-it-is taken last September in the infamous Scottish body of water, and only now revealed to a world in urgent need of some Nessie excitement, have been asked of every photograph or video of the Loch Ness Monster since the first alleged photograph of […]
This year’s season of “Pride Plays,” produced by Rattlesticks Playwrights Theater in New York City, is showing online at Playbill.com. This is the first of two articles focusing on the Black queer playwrights with plays in the season. Rodney Hicks’ play, Just Press Save, is about the hopes, fears, and intrigues of a group of six high school seniors, including twins who are undocumented immigrants and a Black trans man. Hicks, 46, is also an actor who starred in the original productions of Rent and Come From Away. Just Press Save is directed by Michael Greif, who directed Hicks in the original production […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox every Sunday. Prince William’s 38th birthday today has been happy and also a tad dramatic, with reports claiming royal aides fear a new book about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will see William “painted as the bad guy” in the tumult over their exit from the royal family. William’s birthday coincided with Father’s Day, the twinned events marked by new pictures taken by Kate Middleton showing William enjoying playtime with his three […]
On Tuesday, Melissa Zarda was dealing with two things at home in Kansas City, Missouri: the loud barking and mischief of her new foster puppy Winnie, a cattle dog/pitbull mix, while—above the din—relishing the hard-fought, historic victory she had just won in the Supreme Court in the memory of her beloved, deceased brother Donald. His was one of three cases featuring LGBTQ people fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity that SCOTUS yesterday ruled, 6-3, were illegal under the sex discrimination provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ruling—embracing the cases of gay men Zarda and […]
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump administration rolled out its new rule denying trans people access to proper healthcare on the fourth anniversary of the massacre at the LGBTQ Pulse nightclub, in which 49 people died in Orlando, Florida. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Trump administration published the rule during LGBTQ Pride month. The cruelty is the obligatory scattering of garnish for the Trump administration; the sting long after the slap has been delivered. The cruelty is relished just as much as the intended harm. The cruelty, as the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer once observed, is the point. The […]
Tonight should have been the Tony Awards. But Broadway has been shut since March 12, and with it the postponement of those shows (and cancellation of a few others) that would have qualified for them. Indeed, this year the Awards feel a faraway shadow—and not just because there is no Broadway to fuel a ceremony right now. The death of George Floyd and subsequent protests and debates about racism and change have led Broadway and the wider world of theater—like many individuals and institutions—to necessarily question itself, not for the first time, about the need for urgent change. Yet again, theater […]
Larry Kramer, the late LGBTQ and AIDS activist, author and playwright, has been much praised and analyzed over the last 24 hours. But Larry Kramer was also both a friend and professional collaborator to many. Lost amid the tales of fire and brimstone are stories of a certain paisley pocket, an unexpected delivery of chicken soup, and the linking of arms late at night on a Broadway street. On Wednesday, in my obituary of Kramer, who died Wednesday at the age of 84, I mulled what people invariably mention most about Kramer: his anger. That anger, as I wrote, could be […]
Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, makes clear she does not “have a crystal ball.” But her personal belief is that Broadway will reopen in January 2021, she reveals in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast. For St. Martin, Broadway’s post-pandemic reopening means safety protocols being in place to ensure audience members can sit next to each other as they did before, likely—at least in the first phase of reopening—wearing masks, with actors, singers, and dancers able to perform in the same numbers and proximity, and with the same energy, as before. “We know that we cannot […]
Earlier this week James Middleton, Kate’s handsome brother, shaved his beard off. He filmed this momentous event and posted it on Instagram, hairy chest sward on display and surrounded by his many dogs, Ella, Zulu, Inka, Luna and Mabel—and who knows, perhaps hundreds more off-camera, responding to his canine pan pipes. The next thing we saw and heard, post-shave, was Middleton’s fiancée Alizee Thevenet squealing with delighted surprise at the sight of James appearing in the garden of his parents, Carole and Michael, in the bucolic British hamlet of Bucklebury, where the couple are spending quarantine. It was the first time […]
Advocates say the U.S. Navy could be on the verge of ruling on a second waiver sought by a transgender staff member so that they may carry on serving their country. If granted, it would be the second successful challenge to President Trump’s ban on trans service personnel, after it was revealed this week that the Navy has granted the first ever waiver to a transgender naval officer. The officer in the first successful case, named in court documents as Lieutenant Jane Doe, has served in the Navy for 10 years. She is one of a group of trans service personnel […]
All Aimee Stephens wanted to do was the job that she loved. “We’re human beings,” Stephens told this reporter just before her landmark LGBTQ case was heard at the Supreme Court last October. “We deserve the same basic human rights as everyone else has. That’s all we’re asking for. We are not asking for anything special. We just want the basic human rights that we should already have anyway.” Stephens, whose case alleging she was fired for being transgender went all the way to the Supreme Court, died on Tuesday in Metro Detroit, aged 59. Hers was the first case about […]
It is unknown if the Supreme Court will finally issue a ruling on Thursday about whether it is legal to fire LGBTQ people on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is also unknown if Aimee Stephens will be alive to hear their decision. Stephens, 59, is presently receiving end-of-life hospice care at home in Michigan, her wife Donna at her side. Stephens’ is one of three cases before the court, bought on behalf a trio of LGBTQ people—Stephens, the family of Donald Zarda, and Gerald Bostock—who claim they were fired because of their gender identity or sexual […]