On just its second day live, the Daily Beast has its first exclusive celebrity profile! Well, not exclusive. This morning the Website posted a feature on Jennifer Lopez by contributor Kevin Sessums, which had been previously killed by a fashion magazine because Lopez was not happy with the way her interviews went. The story nearly qualifies as a notch on our tally of the death of the celebrity profile, simply because it uses a hackneyed frame in which Sessums “discovers” that Lopez, who lives on the North Shore of Long Island and is rich, is just like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. But in a way it’s actually the reverse — it kind of represents the resurrection of the celebrity profile. If Brown’s Website makes a habit of resuscitating killed profiles that somehow offended celebrities, she could have a real winning trend on her hands (provided she edits them, a bit). Because in Sessums’s story, we actually learn things about Lopez.
For example, the famously controlled actress and singer once had a nervous breakdown:
“There was a time when I was very overworked and I was doing music and movies and so many things. I was suffering from a lack of sleep. And I did have a kind of nervous breakdown. I froze up on a set. Well, not on a set, but in my trailer. I was like — I don’t want to move. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to do anything. It was on that movie Enough,” she says, referring to the film in which she played a battered wife who finally fights back. “Yeah. I did. I had a nervous breakdown.”
It’s interesting that it happened, sure, but much more interesting that she admitted it. Sure, Tina is playing a teensy bit cheap by using killed material from other publications, but it’s certainly been done before. And we read the whole thing! Without even any pictures to get us through it! Can we request that Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt get this same treatment, please? Because we haven’t read a thing that has interested us about either of them in at least half a decade.
Behind the Glow [Daily Beast]
