It’s been a busy summer at Celebrity Intelligence, I did take a trip to Europe but we didn’t stop working hence the videos in my mom’s back garden and on the beach in Greece talking about the mechanics of Jelly Roll’s divorce and how lawyers kissing in the park took over the zeitgeist... But the fruits of our summer working so hard are coming to fruition. We took in your feedback and have launched a dynamic new logo that works better for our cross platform needs. We have developed a new video show and podcast, and we want you in on it from the start.
I have drafted in author, journalist, podcaster and (oh I hate this word but she is prolific) content creator Jo Piazza to cohost Celebrity Intelligence: The Lowdown, a show where we explain how Hollywood really works and talk about, what the tabloids got wrong, what the trades missed, and what's actually true underneath the headlines. Oh and bring you some scoops along the way.
Jo is the ideal co-host for this show because she brings a genuinely rare combination: she came up through celebrity gossip journalism at the Rush and Molloy column where she was famously propositioned by a boybander, and then with me in the trenches of celebrity weeklies, so she has the institutional memory and the war stories to match my own, but she has also spent the years since building a serious literary (her new book The Parisian Heist is out now - buy it here) and podcasting career that gives her critical distance from the world we both came from. She's a bestselling author who literally wrote the book on the business of fame Celebrity, Inc. and her podcast Under the Influence has given her a forensic understanding of how fame functions in the social media era that no amount of magazine experience alone could provide. The result is someone who can sit across from me and do something a straightforward insider never could: interrogate the stories we both lived through, push back on received wisdom, and ask the question the audience is actually asking and disagree with me A LOT.
This episode with Jo is our first go at it: a test, so bare with us. Tell us what you think by replying to this email, tell me what you want more of, what's missing. You're not just watching this get made, you're helping decide if it gets made at all.
You can listen to the show as a podcast here. And you can watch the show and Jo and I pulling funny faces on our YouTube channel here.
Jo and Dan Disagreeing About Whether Meghan Markle Deserves an Apology
In the first episode, there’s a mix of gossip, industry news and celebrity scandal and also a discussion about the fall out from Hayden Panettiere’s death and trying to find real meaningful ways to help our industry and world protect these kids from the trauma of working in Hollywood from a young age. I propose a controversial idea that Jo completely disagrees with but doctors actually support. The deep dive into this follows for paid subscribers.
