The daily gossip: March 23, 2020
1.
It's sadly going to be awhile yet before we get to watch Simone Biles crush another floor routine on the world stage. In a Monday interview, veteran International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound confirmed that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be postponed due to the global coronavirus outbreak. "The Games are not going to start on July 24, that much I know," he said. The decision follows Canada and Australia announcing Sunday they would not send athletes to the Games if they were held this summer as planned. "I'm heartbroken," gold medal-winning Canadian wrestler Erica Wiebe tweeted, adding: "But I admire their leadership … and I believe we are standing on the right side of history." [USA Today, Sporting News]
2.
Meghan McCain announced Sunday on Instagram that she and her husband, Ben Domenech, "have been blessed to find out I'm pregnant." The 35-year-old View co-host and daughter of the late Sen. John McCain said she would be "self-isolating as a precaution" after consulting with her doctors. Last year, McCain published a powerful op-ed about the "horrendous experience" of having a miscarriage and blaming herself afterward. As she later told Good Morning America, "since then, [I] have just tried to go a little easier on myself on all things having to do with motherhood and pregnancy-related, because it's not easy being a woman." [Page Six, Instagram]
3.
Call it love in the time of coronavirus: Idris Elba's wife, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, revealed Sunday to Oprah Winfrey that she tested positive for COVID-19 after deciding against quarantining herself away from her husband, who was previously diagnosed. "I could have made the decision to put myself maybe in a separate room or stay away," Sabrina Elba told Winfrey via FaceTime. "But I made the decision to want to be with him, and you know, still touch him." The couple had faced backlash for not separating after Idris Elba's diagnosis, but the actor defended their "calculated" risk. "When something like this is going on in the world, love is all you can get," he said. "Who am I to turn down my wife's support?" [NBC News, The Daily Mail]
4.
You're apparently not the only one getting embarrassingly sappy about your friends while in social isolation. On Monday, Stevie Nicks published an open letter to her fans in which she enthusiastically praised her pal Harry Styles' new album, Fine Line. "Way to go, H.," wrote the Fleetwood Mac singer. "It is your Rumours…" Styles and Nicks have something of a "long-lost son and mother relationship," according to Vulture, but for the moment anyway Nicks is "staying in with my goddaughters and my assistant Karen and all our dogs" — and penning gushy letters with too many tildes. [Vulture, Rolling Stone]
5.
Your celebrity conspiracy du jour involves Michelle Williams and Thomas Kail, who maybe secretly got married while no one was looking. The couple, who met on the set of Fosse/Verdon, announced their engagement (and Williams' pregnancy!) at the end of last year. Over the weekend, both People and The Daily Mail got ahold of pics of the pair wearing what appeared to be wedding bands while they were out and about in Brooklyn. You might be wondering, what were Williams and Kail doing out of their homes during a pandemic that has shut down the entire city?, but The Daily Mail reassures Williams at least practiced good social distancing and greeted her friends "with a foot touch." [People, The Daily Mail]
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