The Hollywood Ledger

The most compelling As Ever product is the tea Variety just spilled

I had rather hoped, following a perfectly agreeable St. Patrick’s Day and the restorative effects of a Guinness or two in good company, that this week’s second dispatch might concern itself with something other than the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The Princess of Wales was magnificent with the Irish Guards, as she invariably is, and I was prepared to leave it there and consider the day satisfactorily concluded.

And then Variety published their piece.

I should note, for readers who have come to expect a certain measured restraint in these pages, that the extra candor you may detect below is entirely the fault of the stout. I offer no further apology. To protect the innocent, we shall make this dispatch this week’s paywalled piece.

Let us begin with the essential observation: this is not a piece written by Tom Bower. This is not a piece written by a British tabloid with an institutional axe to grind or a republican columnist with a subscription to advance. This is Variety. This is the trade bible of the entertainment industry that the Sussexes elected to join when they departed the one they were born into. When Hollywood’s own paper of record publishes a piece sourced to six well-placed individuals describing the mood at Netflix as “we’re done,” one is no longer dealing with what the Sussex communications apparatus likes to call coordinated attacks from the British press. One is dealing with something considerably more uncomfortable: a verdict from the industry they chose.

The details in this piece are, taken individually, the sort of thing one might dispute or contextualise. Taken together, they constitute a portrait.