My God, you guys. What. A. Week.
We’ve got a booze-soaked DUI stop involving lasagna offers and swimming pool invitations. We’ve got a diva who may or may not be losing her voice after what has genuinely been a couple of years of hell. And then there was my booze-soaked celebrity weekend in the Turks and Caicos, courtesy of yours truly, which I promise was far more fun and far less chaotic than anything Britney Spears is currently up to.
This is not an episode of The Days of Our Montecito Lives. This is just… another week in Hollywood, because those fools cannot help themselves.
So, let’s go.
The Britney DUI videos came out and they are rough.
The first piece of footage is the 911 call that got her pulled over in the first place. A witness reported a BMW driving erratically on the 101 northbound — swerving in and out of lanes, slamming on brakes, nearly sideswiping multiple vehicles at high speed. The caller was genuinely scared someone was going to get killed.
Now, I’ve reported on Britney driving erratically before, and every time I do, I get people coming at me saying it’s not proven. Well. It’s proven now. The cops were on the ball, and they got her.
When officers try to pull her over and ask her to step out of the car, Britney — confused, clearly not sober — asks if she can follow them somewhere more private because her baby is down in the hotel room. When an officer suggests she get into the patrol car, she says: “No, I don’t want to get in your car, sir. You can come to my house — I’ll make you food and lasagna or whatever you want.”
All in a weird baby voice that goes in and out of a British accent. It gives serious Whatever Happened to Baby Jane vibes.
Then it gets weirder. She mentions she has a pool, saying, “My babies are coming to my house tonight,” as if this is a totally reasonable counterproposal to a field sobriety test.
But then Britney can be heard saying to the cops: “My mom killed somebody, and she never got in trouble. Why not (let me go)?”
Which is actually true…Lynn Spears, Britney’s mother, did, in fact, write about a horrific accident in her biography where she was driving in Louisiana on a rainy, dark night, and she came upon two boys riding bikes. One boy got out of the way, but the other, a twelve-year-old, did not survive. Lynn was not charged and it was ruled an accident.
But the idea that Britney has apparently been carrying this in her head as some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card is just nuts.
She also admitted in additional footage to being on Adderall (without a prescription), Prozac, and Lamictal — a medication used for bipolar disorder. Officers also smelled alcohol on her breath, and Britney told them she’d only had one mimosa hours earlier, then added, with remarkable confidence: “I could probably drink four bottles of wine and take care of you. I’m an angel.”
Nota Bene: She failed the field sobriety test and was arrested.
Now, I get it: Britney Spears has had some issues and perhaps was raised by people who used her as a cash cow and maybe didn’t keep an eye on her at all times. She had a conservatorship that, while arguably necessary given her mental health, was run by a family member, which wasn’t the best idea. She also has bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and other things going on.
But Britney has had every opportunity to pull on her big girl pants and deal with her shit. Instead, she checked herself out of rehab after just two weeks, when people around her were hoping for three months (minimum), and went immediately to a liquor store. She then caused another drunken commotion.
The judge has mandated psychiatric and psychological treatment… let’s hope she actually gets it.
I love Mariah Carey. Mariah is my girl.
Which is why the recent video of her performing at a Tiffany event in New York genuinely upset me, and why I got flooded with messages: Is she okay? Did she lose her voice? What’s happening?
Mariah looked sad, depressed, and like she was about to cry on that stage. That was not the voice, or the presence, I know.
Mariah has had an absolutely brutal couple of years.
Last year, Page Six ran breathless headlines about her “staggering $8.6 million in mortgage debt.” But here’s the thing: she is selling her Tribeca apartment for $27 million, and she’s worth $300 million. She also lives in California now, so why keep the NYC place?
But she’s also been slogging through hell in recent years
About two and a half years ago, she and her longtime boyfriend, Bryan Tanaka, broke up. Bryan is a nice guy, but the truth is, she wants company, but it’s hard as hell to find someone to date when you’re Mariah Carey.
Then, in 2024, her mother died, followed shortly by the death of her older sister Alison, who had struggled for years with mental illness, addiction, and serious health issues.
And then her brother, Morgan, the only living relative she had left, sued her because she wrote her biography and talked about her own life and family trauma, including the fact that he was abusive to her. Mariah was deposed earlier this year, and the lawsuit is still ongoing.
She has described a childhood that was unstable and violent, which is also, by the way, why she married Tommy Mottola so young at nineteen — to get the hell out of that home. (Tommy, who was the head of Sony, her boss, her husband, and her manager simultaneously, kept her essentially imprisoned in their New Jersey house, had the place bugged, and had security guards reporting her every move. She eventually got the courage to leave. He then — allegedly — gave her album tracks to Jennifer Lopez so J.Lo’s record could come out two weeks before Mariah’s Glitter, which then dropped right after 9/11 and bombed spectacularly. The nervous breakdown that followed is part of music history.)
The point is: She’s going through some shit. But this woman is a fighter, a survivor. Unlike Britney, when Mariah hit rock bottom, she dealt with it and took care of herself. She sees her doctors and looks after her kids, Moroccan and Monroe, who are fifteen now and by all accounts are lovely, well-adjusted kids with beautiful voices.
And don’t worry: the voice is not gone. Friends of mine saw her in Vegas recently and said she did not lip sync a single song — she sang everything, and it was fabulous. She fulfilled a Tiffany obligation on what was clearly not her best day, we have all had those days.
I will be front and center when Mariah goes back on stage for Christmas. Team Carey, always.
And now, for the rando trip to the Turks & Caicos
I was invited on a junket to the opening of Treasure Island Beach at Beaches Resort in Turks and Caicos. They told me there would be celebrities, so I said sure, why not, and I am so glad I did.
Four days. Three nights. I am still recovering.
Here is who was there:
Taye Diggs — I mean, come on. The man.
Boris Kodjoe and Nicole Ari Parker — Let me tell you something about meeting this couple in person. You look at them and you genuinely do not know where to look first. They are impossibly, almost offensively good-looking. Like, you want to poke them to make sure they’re not AI. (They are not AI. They are very real and also very nice.) I managed to have a whole conversation with Nicole, but when Boris tried to talk to me my mouth went so dry that the best I could manage was grunting and backed away (I;m cool like that)
Jesse Eisenberg — This guy might be the nicest human being in the entire entertainment industry. I was struggling with bags trying to get through a restaurant door when this nebbishy guy in a baseball hat appears out of nowhere going “I got it, I got it, I got it” and holds the door open for me. It was Jesse Eisenberg. I said thank you, I appreciate it. And I meant it. Jesse Eisenberg’s parents, whoever you are: you raised him right. He also caused a bit of chaos at the Turks and Caicos airport at the end of the trip because he apparently lost his passport in the scramble to leave. Caused a bit of a fuss.
Chad Michael Murray — caused an absolute disturbance among every gay man at the resort, myself potentially included. I will say no more.
Some “Housewives” (terms I use very loosely here), including Kelly Bensimmon and Dorinda Medley, were roaming around, as well as a local performer I am calling the Turks and Caicos Daryl Hannah: by night she was a butterfly stilt walker; by day, she was a mermaid with a full tail in the water. She was incredible.
Ok, so that’s it for this rainy and disgusting Memorial Day weekend round-up, and I hope it was better where you were.
Until next time,
XOXO,
Pfro and Doug