The daily gossip: Florence Pugh and Zach Braff break up, Mariah Carey met with resistance in trying to trademark 'Queen of Christmas,' and more

1. Florence Pugh and Zach Braff break up

Florence Pugh and Zach Braff are done, and she'd appreciate it if you could contain your excitement. The Don't Worry Darling star confirmed in a Harper's Bazaar profile she and the Scrubs actor quietly broke up earlier this year. "We've been trying to do this separation without the world knowing, because it's been a relationship that everybody has an opinion on," Pugh said. She started dating Braff in 2019, but her fans weren't exactly quick to warmly embrace the relationship, largely because of the 21-year age gap; she's 26 and he's 47. So Pugh says they ended their relationship quietly to avoid "having millions of people telling us how happy they are that we're not together." Before they split, though, Pugh and Braff already worked together on the movie A Good Person, which he directed and she starred in. It's set for release in 2023. That's right: We have another Deep Water situation on our hands, folks.

Harper's Bazaar

2. Mariah Carey met with resistance in trying to trademark 'Queen of Christmas'

The queen of Christmas is facing some challengers to the throne. Mariah Carey is trying to trademark the term "Queen of Christmas," which she's often referred to as thanks to her festive earworms like "All I Want For Christmas Is You." But according to Variety, she's "meeting fierce resistance" from two singers also known as holiday monarchs: Darlene Love and Elizabeth Chan. In fact, the latter singer, who has an album titled "Queen of Christmas," has filed a declaration of opposition trying to stop Carey from trademarking the term. Love also complained on Facebook, "David Letterman officially declared me the Queen of Christmas 29 years ago, a year before [Carey] released 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' and at 81 years of age I'm NOT changing anything." We'll see how this epic, Game of Thrones-style war for Christmas plays out, but one thing's for sure: When you come at the Christmas queen — whoever that might be — you best not miss.

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Variety

3. Idris Elba's daughter failed to land a role as ... Idris Elba's daughter

Where's Hollywood nepotism when Idris Elba's daughter needs it? In a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, Idris Elba revealed his own daughter, an aspiring actress, auditioned for the role of his character's daughter in the movie Beast — and she didn't get it. "It came down to chemistry in the end," Elba said. He explained that while her audition was "great," the relationship between his real daughter and movie daughter wasn't exactly the same, and "the chemistry wasn't right for film, weirdly enough." Will Packer, who produced the movie, noted he was the one to call her and deliver the bad news, and he praised Elba for insisting his daughter be treated the same as anyone else in the audition process. Still, Elba admitted that after she failed to get the role, "My daughter didn't talk to me for about three weeks." Perhaps she's just getting into character for her next role: Idris Elba's estranged daughter.

Newsweek Shadow and Act

4. Alec Baldwin decides an interview with Chris Cuomo will fix everything

After facing blowback over his interview with Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin has decided to chat with someone with zero controversy attached to them: Chris Cuomo. The actor sat down with the fired CNN anchor for a wide-ranging conversation, during which he once again insisted he never pulled the trigger of the gun in the fatal Rust shooting. "Everybody who was there, they know exactly what happened," Baldwin said. "They know exactly who was to blame." This is despite the fact that an FBI forensic report recently suggested the gun couldn't have been fired without pulling the trigger. Throughout the interview, Baldwin also blasted "cancel culture" and critics who he claims are "out to get" him, at one point doing so with this deeply bizarre image: "If Barbara Bush fell through the ice on a pond and I waded out into the pond and saved her life," Baldwin declared, "they'd say I groped her."

Deadline People

5. Zoë Kravitz regrets her comments about the Oscars slap

In the aftermath of the Oscars slap, not expressing an opinion was, in fact, an option — one that's looking more and more appealing to Zoë Kravitz. The Batman star in a Wall Street Journal profile expressed some regret over how she slammed Will Smith for slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars earlier this year, which sparked backlash against her as Twitter used it as an opportunity to dig into her own alleged "problematic" past. "It's a scary time to have an opinion or to say the wrong thing or to make controversial art or statements or thoughts or anything," Kravitz told the Journal, adding that she wishes she "had handled that differently." Kravitz also explained she's "in a place right now where I don't want to express myself through a caption or a tweet" but rather "through art" — so look forward to her short story about the totally fictional, slap-happy character of Sill Wmith.

The Wall Street Journal Variety