The daily gossip: Octavia Spencer has advice for newly-engaged Britney Spears, the VMAs got rowdy, and more

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1. Octavia Spencer has advice for newly-engaged Britney Spears
2. Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox introduce their 'future baby daddies' at the VMAs
3. Author Hilary Mantel predicts Prince George will never be king
4. Woman alleges that Queen Latifah's dog was killed by one of The Dog Whisperer's pitbulls
5. Conor McGregor fights Machine Gun Kelly despite insisting he only fights 'real fighters'

published 13 September 2021

1. Octavia Spencer has advice for newly-engaged Britney Spears

A chorus of congratulatory messages flooded the comment section of Britney Spears' Instagram post announcing her engagement to Sam Asghari. But Octavia Spencer had something different to say: "Make him sign a prenup." The actress's comment received more than 50,000 likes and her sentiments caught the attention of Asghari. He addressed calls for a prenup with a hint of humor, writing, "Of course we're getting iron clad prenup to protect my jeep and shoe collection incase she dumps me one day." The engagement rounded out a big week for Spears after her father petitioned the courts to end the conservatorship. The singer was clearly excited about the news, as she captioned a video of the ring: "I can't f---ing believe it!"

Avril Lavine released the cautionary tale "Sk8r Boi" in 2002, and Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox listened carefully. Cut to 2021, and their skater boys are rocking up the MTV Video Music Awards. Kardashian and Fox introduced Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker's performance at Sunday night's award show, and Fox said, "New York, I need you to get extra loud for our future baby daddies." It's not clear if she was just having fun with colloquial speech, or if there really will be little goth babies in the future. Fox referred to Kelly as "Daddy" in a recent Instagram post, and everyone knows Kardashian and Barker are hot and heavy, so it definitely seems like a possibility!

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Author Hilary Mantel is kind of an expert in messy endings, so when she says things like that she doesn't believe Prince George will ever sit on the throne, you listen up. Mantel has been a longtime critic of the British monarchy, having once called Kate Middleton "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung," and wondered aloud if Queen Elizabeth is "the only person who believes in the monarchy now." Now she's back at it, telling The Times that her "back of the envelope" guess is that the royal family will be gone in two generations. "I think it's a fair prediction, but let's say I wouldn't put money on it," she went on. "It's hard to understand the thinking behind the monarchy in the modern world when people are just seen as celebrities."

Well, this is gonna hurt business. A woman named Lidia Matiss has filed a lawsuit against celebrity dog trainer Cesar Millan, claiming The Dog Whisperer star's late pitbull, Junior, attacked her when she went to visit her mom, who worked for Millan, and effectively ended her gymnastics career. But her lawsuit alleges an even crazier detail in its evidence that Junior was a known danger and shouldn't have been allowed "unsupervised and unleashed" in the training facility. According to the legal documents, Junior once killed one of Queen Latifah's two dogs that she brought to Cesar's Dog Psychology Center for training. "Matiss alleges that Junior 'mauled one of [QL's] dogs to death' and said that Cesar covered up the incident by telling his staff that they were to tell the actress that her dog was hit and killed by a car," People writes. Woof.

MMA fighter Conor McGregor insists he didn't fight Machine Gun Kelly on the red carpet at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards based on the irrefutable evidence that "I only fight real fighters." Never mind that there are plenty of videos of the altercation, which Vulture reports started because "McGregor asked Kelly's team for a photo together, which Kelly's team denied. McGregor reacted by throwing his drink at Kelly which caused the commotion." A source told Page Six that "[McGregor] was ready to throw fists. Security was having trouble holding him back." Nevertheless, McGregor told Entertainment Tonight that "Nothing happened with me, I only fight real fighters, people that actually fight, you know what I mean. I certainly don't fight little vanilla boy rappers." Getting photos with little vanilla boy rappers, though, is apparently another story.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.