Remember our old friend Kate Major – the one who quit her job at Star magazine because she fell in love with her story subject, Jon “Ick. Nast.” Gosselin and reportedly agreed to work as his personal assistant? Rather than disappear completely, Kate has chosen to stay around and make my life more enjoyable with her wacky antics. Once she and Jon were over, Kate hightailed it over to Jon’s best frenemy, Michael Lohan. Now the gruesome twosome have moved to LA together and are getting married. How can this story possibly get more absurd, you ask? Well, Popeater now claims that Kate used to be Lindsay’s (as in, Michael’s daughter) personal assistant several years ago. Lindsay is reportedly not at all happy to have Kate as her new stepmom and, for once, I totally agree with her. So, let’s see if we can reconstruct the Kate Major timeline…
- Lives in LA
- Works as Lindsay Lohan’s assistant
- Moves to New York
- Works for Star
- Leaves Star, Gosselin fiasco
- Hooks up with Michael Lohan
- Back to LA
- Now.
Something about all of this seems totally off. Now, I like a good conspiracy theory, so here’s mine: this entire thing, start to finish, was planned by Kate and Michael. Maybe they got together when Kate was working for Lindsay, and Lindsay was (rightly) grossed out by her dad hooking up with her assistant and fired Kate. Michael, who has lots of celebrity magazine connections thanks to his career of selling stories about his kid for a living, called in a favor and got Kate a job at Star. They kept seeing each other in secret and when she realized they could make names for themselves by aligning themselves with tabloid magnet Jon Gosselin, they used him as a pawn in their scheme. Man, this is brilliant. And terrifying. I think I need to step away from the computer for awhile.
Singer Susan Boyle recently found herself in hot water when she had an outburst at a restaurant in London. Reportedly, Susan snapped and shouted at one of the employees of the restaurant. However, it turns out Susan had someone else as the target of her ire – her assistant, who apparently told Susan that she needed to go on a diet and lose some weight. Um, not cool, assistant. I’m struggling to find a reason why anyone would tell their boss to go on a diet – even if you think that, why would you ever say it to the person who has the authority to fire you? Most celebrity assistant jobs involve being a bit of a yes man or yes woman, and I find it incredibly surprising that an assistant would ever tell their celebrity boss “you need to lose weight.” Entertainment Lawyer, as usual, has a pretty good theory – that the assistant was passing along a message from a manager or agent or someone else who wanted to pressure Susan about her looks. Sadly, it’s not at all uncommon for the people responsible for managing a famous person’s career to give the celebrity unsolicited ‘advice’ about how to dress/look, even to the point where they encourage them to diet.
That said, Susan apologized for her outburst, and let’s hope this is the last we hear of it.
Lots of people who work as celebrity assistants are doing their jobs because they’re trying to break into the entertainment industry. That makes sense, since working for a celebrity is a great way to make contacts and learn about how the industry works from the inside. However, one celebrity assistant is hoping to make the jump into a slightly less related career – he participated in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ annual “Fantasy Camp.” While most of the guys who participate in the program are trying to meet famous baseball players, there was one camp participant who had a little star power of his own:
“I was doing some scouting last night for today’s draft and I was looking over everybody’s occupation,” the former D-backs All-Star outfielder said. “I saw that one guy is list as an assistant to an actor or actress and I was wondering if he would be willing to share just who that is.”
Gregg Simon slowly stood up and said, “I’m the personal assistant to Carmen Electra.”
Not surprisingly, everybody asked if Electra might make an appearance during the week to support her PA, but it didn’t happen. MLB.com blogger Steve Gilbert, who was chronicling his experiences at Fantasy Camp, asked Simon if meeting his baseball idols was as exciting as meeting Electra’s famous friends.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “No way. This is much cooler. Meeting these guys is a much bigger deal. The only thing from ‘Hollywood’ that compares to this for me was meeting Bruce Springsteen and Howard Stern. No one else is close.”
STA’s mascot, Naomi Campbell, is once again back in the news with some assistant-related drama. However, this time she’s the one suing instead of the one being sued. Naomi brought a suit against her former assistant, Vanessa Frisbee, who allegedly violated her non-disclosure agreement by selling a story about Naomi to a tabloid publication. Instead of waiting for a verdict, Naomi claims she’s “tired of litigation” (excuse me while I laugh hysterically for a minute) and has pulled the plug on the whole trial. That doesn’t come cheap, though – she now has to pay £300,000 for her and Frisbee’s legal fees.
In other European celebrity assistant news, U2 bassist Adam Clayton is pressing charges against his former assistant, Carol Hawkins, whom Adam alleges embezzled €1.8 million from him over the years. From the Irish Times:
Mr Sreenan [Clayton's attorney] said the matter went back to September 2008 when Ms Hawkins – who worked as a housekeeper and personal assistant – had come to Mr Clayton and confessed she had misappropriated €13,000 of his money. He had dealt with this in “a compassionate manner” and had altered his financial arrangements accordingly and kept her on in employment.
However, counsel said it had since emerged that Ms Hawkins, without the authorisation of Mr Clayton, had used his debit and credit cards.
On November 19th last, when allegations were put to her, she had accepted the cards had been used and money taken without Mr Clayton’s authorisation but she had disputed the sums involved, Mr Sreenan said. Her employment had been terminated.
Quite the celebrity assistant drama going on this week! I’m definitely keeping an eye on these two cases. Plus, did you know Adam Clayton used to date Naomi Campbell (see photo)? Isn’t it great when these posts come full circle?
Jenni Muro, Lindsay Lohan’s long-suffering assistant/manager (who reportedly finally quit this year) has been through a lot: she was there the night that Lindsay’s second assistant quit and LiLo went on a high-speed pursuit, and she once saved her boss from drowning in an overflowing bathtub. Really, the woman should be getting combat pay.
Now, though, another member of the Lohan family is making Jenni’s life miserable – Lindsay’s famewhore dad, Michael. Michael, who claims to want to help his drug-addled daughter but is happy to collect money from tabloid programs in the meantime, released a voicemail that Jenni left him. In the message, Jenni says, “I get a 5% commission on this entire TV show and it’s sick and disgusting and I’m here and I give up my boyfriend and my dog and my parents and my new place in LA and everything so that your daughter doesn’t kill herself, ok?”
Yikes. TMZ reports that Jenni plans to send Michael a cease and desist letter and might potentially sue.
Published on
November 6, 2009 in
Celebrity Assistant Soapbox and Video.
Tags: assistants on TV, celebrity assistants, fashion, getting fired, rachel zoe, reality TV, taylor jacobson, the rachel zoe project, TV, Video.
Taylor, the peroxide-haired “senior assistant” who seemed to hate her boss Rachel Zoe, has been fired. There was no reason offered by either Rachel or Taylor (who Ashley likes to refer to as “the awesomely bitchy one”). Along with Rachel and fellow assistant Brad, Taylor was one of the stars of The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo, which just finished airing its second season. Today, Taylor emailed all her contacts the following note:
After four amazing years at Rachel Zoe Corporation, I’m saddened and exhilarated at the same time to announce my departure. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take the challenging leap to go off and style on my own.
After the jump, let’s revisit some of Taylor’s finest (and most disgruntled) moments.
Continue reading ‘rachel zoe fires assistant’
There are so many celebrity cameos in the upcoming second Sex and the City movie – Liza Minnelli, Penelope Cruz, Miley Cyrus – that when Bette Midler showed up on the set, nobody was surprised. However, the Divine Miss M wasn’t there to tape a scene. She was there to visit her daughter Sophie, who worked a stint as a production assistant on the movie. “It was a big thrill for her,” Midler told E! Online. “[Sophie] had a great time. She loves the business.”
Some internet searching makes me kind of love Sophie – she graduated from Yale, where she majored in Sociology and learned to speak fluent Mandarin. How many celebrity kids not only go to college but enjoy learning? Plus she and her mom look super cute together.
Man, has it been one heck of a 24 hours in assistant-related drama for Jamie Kennedy.
This morning, Perez Hilton reported that Kennedy was cheating on his current girlfriend, actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, with his ex-girlfriend, former Britney Spears assistant Shannon Funk. That info in itself is pretty juicy and worthy of an STA post. However, it gets so much better.
Later today, another post appeared on Perez. This one outed the “source” on the original story as Jamie’s assistant, Miguel, who has been fired:
Miguel went nuts and started making shit up. This is a David Spade situation, where the assistant gets jealous of the star’s lifestyle and snaps. Miguel snapped and started texting Love late at night and just being a freak. Then he tried to take Jamie down by making shit up. Jamie’s lucky he didn’t get tazered in his sleep by this guy!
Harsh – but very interesting!
Supermodel Elle “The Body” Macpherson is so beautiful that, apparently, everyone is mesmerized into wanting to be her personal assistant. Sara Paxton, one of Macpherson’s costars on the new series The Beautiful Life, said in an interview:
“I become Elle’s personal assistant – when she’s around, she’s so beautiful, I’m like ‘Elle, would you like the fruit platter?’ ‘Elle, cheese plate?’ and they’re like, ‘Sara, you’re in this scene, calm down’.”
“I forget sometimes what I’m doing,” she continued.
Man, supermodels must save so much money by not hiring assistants and instead just letting people be transfixed by their beauty and thus desire to wait on them. I should try that technique.
It’s never fun to report the death of an assistant. Last week, longtime assistant Michael Davison, who worked for Warren Beatty, Barry Diller, and Nicolas Cage, was killed in a car accident while on vacation in Hawaii. An obituary in the Hollywood Reporter referred to Davison as “one of the most experienced and respected personal assistants in the entertainment industry.”
STA’s thoughts are with Davison’s family.
Remember our old friend Kate Major – the one who quit her job at Star magazine because she fell in love with her story subject, Jon “Ick. Nast.” Gosselin and reportedly agreed to work as his personal assistant? Rather than disappear completely, Kate has chosen to stay around and make my life more enjoyable with her wacky antics. Once she and Jon were over, Kate hightailed it over to Jon’s best frenemy, Michael Lohan. Now the gruesome twosome have moved to LA together and are getting married. How can this story possibly get more absurd, you ask? Well, Popeater now claims that Kate used to be Lindsay’s (as in, Michael’s daughter) personal assistant several years ago. Lindsay is reportedly not at all happy to have Kate as her new stepmom and, for once, I totally agree with her. So, let’s see if we can reconstruct the Kate Major timeline…
