In the summer of 2019, the New Yorker’s Naomi Fry wrote about Keanu Reeves, calling him “an unlikely antidote to everything wrong with the news cycle”. She brought up the air of mystery that he has managed to maintain despite 30 years of stardom, the popularity of the “Sad Keanu” meme and his reputation for being an all-round good guy, when fans encounter him unexpectedly, in unusual scenarios. The stories about Reeves’s near-mythic decency have parallels in only two other actors I can think of: Bill Nighy, who recently went viral after people started sharing their stories of meeting him in the street, and Bill Murray. Even as a non-Bill, Reeves has ascended to their ranks.
As the news cycle has progressed from 2019’s “I’m feeling a little anxious about all of this, actually” into 2020’s full-blown Edvard Munch, Reeves continues to be an antidote. Not the kind we could do with right now – sorry for the false alarm there – but an antidote of a sort, a soothing presence in the celebrity landscape, which, overall, is not doing so well (see the Hollywood stars who assembled for the latest earnest celebrity video, to say “I take responsibility” for racism, as if auditioning for a production of King Lear inside an episode of 30 Rock. The intentions are there, the performances a little off; as the Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern pithily tweeted, “regret to inform you the celebs are at it again”).
Trust Reeves to keep it classy. The actor has put himself up for auction, to raise money for Camp Rainbow Gold, a charity based in Idaho that gives children with cancer the chance to go to summer camp. Famous people raffling themselves off has an end-of-the-pier feel to it, so it’s always a delight when it’s a really famous famous person. Reeves has promised 15 minutes on Zoom to the highest bidder, starting at $10,000, though at this stage of lockdown I’m on the verge of giving $10,000 to never have to Zoom anyone again. It will inevitably go for much, much more.
At the end of the summer, Reeves should be back on the big screen, ushering cinemas back into our lives, for more excellent adventures, when Bill & Ted Face the Music will finally be released. In the trailer, the Great Leader tells the ageing rockers: “You were supposed to unite the world and save reality as we know it.” Look, I know he’s only an actor, but times are tough, and I’m holding on to hope wherever I can get it.
Gwyneth Paltrow: a genius for selling candles that smell like…
Gwyneth Paltrow is doing it again. At this point, you’ve got to start wondering if Goop is a form of performance art. At the very least, allow me to put forward a conspiracy theory that Paltrow and her empire of expensive “wellness” is actually a distraction flare, set off by the rich and famous whenever the tide is turning against them, in order to make us all stare, slack-jawed, at whatever it is she’s selling at an astonishing price now. (To borrow the catchphrase of the most recent Drag Race winner, Jaida Essence Hall: “Look over there!”) At any given time, when she activates, we switch off our brains and gawp at the Goop.
I am helpless. I am gawping again. Having released a candle last year called This Smells Like My Vagina, made of bergamot, geraniums, cedar and roses, which was $75, and sold out so quickly that there was a waiting list, last week Paltrow told Jimmy Fallon that she was putting out a follow-up. “The idea was that it was sort of like feminist punk rock,” she said of the vagina candle, a sentence that never stops sounding like magnetic fridge poetry, before revealing that her newest release is called This Smells Like My Orgasm. The orgasm candle smells like grapefruit, cassis berries and gunpowder tea. The box, she said, laughing, is covered in fireworks.
For a brief moment, I paused to give a second thought as to whether a $75 candle could be “feminist punk rock” (while the candles’ names have a 1970s commune air about them, they have a late-stage capitalism price tag). Then I realised I was gawping again. Paltrow is a deeply effective marketer. She knows that the more outlandish a product is, the more we talk about her empire. She knows exactly how to play the game and does so through the underexplored medium of scented candles. Like I say, performance art.
Ant Middleton: when sorry is the easiest word
Say what you will about the SAS: Who Dares Wins presenter and former marine Ant Middleton – and if you are a mum of a certain age and type, you will use the word “dishy” – but he sure knows how to apologise. Mostly because he keeps saying terrible things on the internet that he then has to apologise for. In a recent tweet that he then deleted – obviously – he wrote: “BLM and EDL are not welcome on our streets, absolute scum.” People objected to this disgraceful comparison, causing Middleton to put up an apology video, in which he said he had not intended to compare the two, despite the actual words he had posted.
This comes after his apology in March for telling people there was no way he would stop cuddling fans at the airport because of “some disease, Covid-19”, in the same tone as your nan might tut about her nemesis next door, had they not been locked up inside for months because they’re over 70 and vulnerable. What with demonising the wrong side and saying he’d shake hands willy-nilly despite all of the evidence explaining why that’s a terrible idea, Middleton is starting to look almost prime ministerial.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
