a blog for the beleaguered
Last night at the Fashion Forward event organized by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, I got to meet one of my favorite TV assistants – Andrew Mukamal, assistant to Kelly Cutrone both in real life and on her show Kell On Earth. Andrew is just as funny and nice in person as he is on television. Here’s me posing for a photo op with him. Of course, he looked fabulous and, of course, I was rocking my best “I had a hangover and rolled into work this morning looking like a bum” chic.
In case you live in Antarctica and hadn’t heard, Mel Gibson is back in the news for leaving a series of expletive, threat, and racial slur-laden emails on the voicemail of his now ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. This week on The View, cohost Whoopi Goldberg rose to Gibson’s defense, saying that he isn’t racist and his real problem is that he is an alcoholic who says crazy things when he has been drinking. The comments raised so much fury that Goldberg reportedly got tons of phone calls and emails from angry viewers. On today’s show, she claimed that some people had called her home and yelled at her assistant, who was the one answering the phone.
I don’t know if this actually happened or if she’s exaggerating for effect, but let’s all take a moment to remember one of the rules of assistant karma: even if you are really mad, do not take it out on the assistant. Goldberg is the one who made the comments. Her assistant is probably overworked and underpaid, and in addition to dealing with all of his boss’ shit he now has to get yelled at by strangers because his boss said something on television and people are mad about it. I can’t tell you how many times I got yelled at by people my boss had offended, and you know what? It made me vow never to do it to someone else. Do not continue the cycle of assistant abuse. Just yell at Whoopi instead. Or stop caring about what celebrities say on TV.
Rapper The Dream is married to singer Christina Milian, and the couple has a young daughter named Violet. However, US Weekly got photos of The Dream in the Caribbean with another woman, who turned out to be his personal assistant, Melissa Santiago. While it’s normal for PAs to travel with their bosses, it’s pretty clear from these photos that she was not only there to help with his scheduling and taking phone messages. Milian’s rep has since announced that the couple is separated and will be divorcing.
Sometimes an assistant quits a job working with Celebrity A and goes to work for Celebrity B. Often, those moves happen because of a pay raise or other incentives, or sometimes it’s just going from crazy to slightly less crazy. However, in the case of Ryan Good, he was handed from one celebrity to another like chattel. It reminds me of when kings used to settle battles and land disputes by trading concubines.
Usher, the mentor to teen pop star Justin Beiber, reportedly “gave” Beiber his assistant, Ryan Good. Good is now Beiber’s tour manager and was charged with showing the young singer the ropes. I certainly hope that Good had a say in this decision and is happy about the change, because otherwise that would massively suck.
The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays – there are fireworks, the hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, and crazydaysandnights.net’s blind item reveal day. Unlike many other gossip blogs, Crazy Days and Nights actually tells you who some of their blind item posts are about. Most of them are about bad celebrity behavior, but sometimes the good comes out as well. Here’s one about two celebrities who are awesome bosses:
This foreign born still A list model/reality star and her foreign born celebrity husband have lots of employees. The thing is they treat them all very, very well. Not a day goes by where they don’t send someone on their staff a letter, card or e-mail which tells them how much they are appreciated. It’s the little things.
The awesome bosses were revealed today to be Heidi Klum and Seal. Points for celebrities who treat their employees well!
Lindsay Lohan’s assistant Eleanore quit her job recently. Now, she’s reportedly being offered five-figure deals to sell her story to tabloids. While Eleanore is allegedly not sure what she’s going to do, I thought we could take a nice little trip down memory lane and reflect on what happened to some of Lindsay’s other former assistants.
I don’t know if this answers the question about Eleanore, but I would not be shocked if she says yes. I think it depends on what she wants to do careerwise after this. Lindsay’s a total idiot if she didn’t make Eleanore sign an NDA, especially after all the assistant drama she’s had in the past. If Eleanore really wants to be a PA for another celebrity, talking about Lindsay in the press will not endear her to future celebrity employers. But if she’s more of an Alli Sims type who is just trying to launch her own clothing line or promote her new single, then I predict it’ll be about ten seconds before Eleanore signs on the dotted line and lands herself a photo shoot in Life & Style. Mark my words.
Not every relationship works out – whether that’s husband/wife, parent/child, or boss/employee. But when that relationship dissolves in public, it’s even messier than a regular breakup. Lately, I’ve been watching as stylist to the stars and reality show centerpiece Rachel Zoe has used the fashion media to trash her former assistant, Taylor Jacobson (pictured at left in happier days), who was fired at the end of the last season of The Rachel Zoe Project. Anyone who watched the show saw the obvious tension between Taylor, who’d worked for Zoe some time, and Brad, the second assistant who was hired just as the reality show kicked off. Taylor hoped that hiring Brad meant she’d be promoted into a more managerial position or taking on additional responsibility, but that didn’t really pan out. Naturally, Taylor was frustrated by what she saw as stasis.
Zoe told WWD that “I hired Brad, this little angel, and then Taylor just went in for the kill. And I, like, did not see that coming. I always knew what she was capable of, but who knew that was going to happen with the camera?” Not content to let the mean-bitter-Taylor-picks-on-poor-adorable-angel-Brad storyline rest, Page Six ran an item claiming that Taylor had stolen clothes from her boss. I’ll quote Zoe herself (also from the WWD interview) when she talks about what Taylor’s up to now: “I don’t care what she does.” I also don’t care what Taylor does, but I do care about the fact that Zoe, who I previously respected as an entrepreneur, is talking shit about a former employee in the press. Taylor, to her credit, has barely made a peep. In fact, I didn’t know where she was working until the WWD article mentioned her new job (it’s for a denim company called Kasil).
Is it right to steal clothes? No. It is right to pick on an employee just because you don’t like them, even if you are just taking out your own issues on them? No. And is it right for the boss, the person with the power and the influence, to publicly talk shit about a former employee? No. Rachel Zoe is not some random woman scorned – she is a well known figure in the fashion world who works with celebrities, has tremendous clout, and makes a lot of money. When she goes after Taylor, she looks like she’s kicking someone who is already down. It may be that every single thing she says about Taylor is true, but I don’t care. She’s saying these things in order to promote her reality show and get more people to watch it, and I find that tacky. It would be another thing if Taylor applied for a job somewhere and someone called Zoe to ask whether they should hire her – you’re allowed to say “No, I would not recommend hiring her because she did X and Y when she worked for me” to someone else in the industry if they call about a job reference. But to give interviews to fashion industry publications trashing a former employee, even if you’re 100 percent in the right, just comes off as gross and uneccessary. Zoe has already won: she’s the one who is famous, has a TV show, and gets paid a lot of money to help celebrities pick out clothes. Continuing to smear Taylor is the equivalent of Patti LuPone using a public platform to insult a community theater actor.
I’m sure that Zoe, as she says, is just out to “set the record straight.” The record wasn’t crooked in the first place. However, the new season of The Rachel Zoe Project starts in August. I’m certain that’s totally a coincidence.
Cross-posted at The Gloss
Flavorwire’s list of their favorite assistants from pop culture is pretty good. They have some of the usual suspects in there (Betty Suarez, Smithers, Jessica Zajicek), some up-and-comers (Andrew from Kell on Earth, who I keep meaning to do a post about), and some unconventional picks (until this list came out I thought I was the only person who preferred Emily to Andie in The Devil Wears Prada). But there’s one assistant they single out who I have sadly not ever done an ode to here on STA:
PAULA DEEN’S GAY ASSISTANT BRANDON.
That guy is so awesome. Gay Southerners are among my favorite people ever.
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