What 20 years Covering Hollywood Deaths Taught Me About Hayden Panettiere

We start today’s newsletter with the piece I found hardest to write: what covering Anna Nicole Smith’s death two decades ago taught me about the pattern now circling Hayden Panettiere, and why naming that pattern matters even before anyone has answers. Then a lighter gear change, my read on which Dancing With the Stars season 35 rumors actually hold up against the show’s own casting history, category by category. And we close with something sharper: trying to make sense of Meghan Markle’s turn to acting and how Guy Ritchie and Meghan Markle are both, this week, running the exact same playbook, borrowing someone else’s headline to sell their own.