The Tea — May 05, 2026

The Met Gala was last night, and somehow the dress code became "where do you stand on Jeff Bezos." Blake Lively settled the messiest lawsuit in recent Hollywood memory and then walked the carpet in archival Versace like a woman with absolutely nothing left to prove. Kid Cudi fired M.I.A. mid-tour, and somewhere in the chaos, Stevie Nicks made everyone cry. Let's get into it.

• Sabrina Carpenter & Stevie Nicks — "Landslide" (live) (Met Gala stage): A surprise duet of Nicks's 1975 Fleetwood Mac classic, with Carpenter also performing "Espresso," "Please, Please, Please," and "House Tour."
• Foo Fighters — "Window" on Colbert (Foo Fighters): Dave Grohl debuted the anthemic new track on late night, alongside fatherly advice for daughter Violet Grohl.
• Melodies in the Forest (Ventitre SRL / Pink Flamingo Media Group): World War II drama starring Kevin Spacey, introduced this week at the Cannes Film Market.
• Dragon Slayers (BBC): Matthew Rhys leads a drama about legendary Sunday Times editor Harold Evans.
• Bo-sco (Arianna Reiche): A UK-based digital literary scouting subscription service launched this week.

If you wanted a power move, this is it. The legal battle between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni will no longer go to trial after they reached a settlement deal that their lawyers announced Monday, per NBC News. And then — because Blake Lively is Blake Lively — she showed up at the Met Gala hours later in an archival 2006 Atelier Versace gown inspired by Venetian Rococo paintings, walking the carpet like the past two years hadn't happened.

Quick refresher: Lively had accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during production of the 2024 movie and alleged that his company, Wayfarer Studios, retaliated against her after she complained. A federal judge tossed most of her claims last month — including harassment, defamation, and conspiracy — but allowed three to proceed, including breach of contract and retaliation. The settlement landed just before trial.

Terms were not disclosed. TMZ reported it appears no money changed hands, even though Lively had claimed $161 million in damages from the alleged smear campaign. Both sides issued a joint statement that was a masterclass in saying nothing while sounding extremely reasonable. What to watch: whether Baldoni attempts any kind of public rehabilitation. His reputation took the bigger hit, and a settlement isn't vindication — it's silence with a bow on it. The signal that he's lost: no major studio attaches to his next project. The signal that he's winning: a sympathetic Vanity Fair sit-down within 90 days.

The Met Gala happened last night, and the actual drama wasn't on the carpet — it was in the comments. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos served as honorary chairs and key sponsors, with Bezos contributing a reported $10 million, per Deadline. Tickets ran $100,000; tables, $350,000. Critics flagged Amazon's donations to President Donald Trump's inauguration fund, Amazon's $40 million Melania Trump documentary, and editorial upheaval at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, per Refinery29.

Taraji P. Henson — a former attendee — reshared an Instagram post slamming Bezos for owning a $500 million superyacht while Amazon warehouse workers face "precarious conditions, low wages and high injury rates," captioned simply: "Enjoy the MET," per Variety. Zendaya, Meryl Streep, and Bella Hadid skipped; Bad Bunny, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Colman Domingo, and Beyoncé (a co-chair alongside Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour) attended. Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted that "if Jeff Bezos can drop $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes," per The Wrap.

The escalation got physical: a protester breached the entrance and was tackled by security, per Variety Australia. Ahead of the weekend, nearly 300 bottles of fake urine were deposited inside the Metropolitan Museum to call attention to allegations that Amazon drivers are forced to urinate in containers. The real question: does this become a pattern? If next year's gala loses a marquee co-chair or a major fashion house publicly distances itself, the era of consequence-free celebrity attendance is over. If everyone's back in 2027 like nothing happened, we'll know exactly how thin the outrage was.

In a sign of how the guest list is shifting, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan made a quiet Met Gala debut — skipping the carpet entirely, per E! News, and heading inside to talk with Instagram boss Adam Mosseri and musician Jon Batiste.

This one has layers. Per Variety, Kid Cudi announced he removed M.I.A. as an opener on his Rebel Ragers Tour after a viral May 2 monologue at the Dallas date, where she was booed for lines including, "I've been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter," and, "I can't do 'Illegal,' though some of you could be in the audience."

Cudi's Instagram statement, per NBC News: he had warned her team before the tour that he didn't want anything offensive at his shows and was assured she understood. "I won't have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase." M.I.A. fired back on X — in all caps — pointing out she isn't eligible to vote in the U.S. and invoking her track record on immigrant rights, per TMZ. Big Boi will continue as opener.

The impossible position: M.I.A. is a Sri Lankan–born British artist who built her entire career on immigrant identity and songs about borders, and she's now defending Republican immigration politics to a crowd that came for "Paper Planes." If she books a sympathetic press tour or drops new music in two weeks, she's converting this into a career moment. If she goes quiet, the firing sticks — and so does the new political brand, whether she wanted it or not.

Per Deadline's exclusive, Kevin Spacey has signed on to lead a World War II drama titled Melodies in the Forest, produced by Italy's Ventitre SRL in co-production with Pink Flamingo Media Group, with the project being introduced this week at the Cannes Film Market.

Spacey was acquitted of sexual assault charges in the UK in 2023, but allegations from multiple accusers had already ended his Hollywood career — written off House of Cards, dropped by his agency, frozen out of mainstream projects. Melodies is a European production, not an American studio picture, and that's the whole story: the path back, if there is one, runs through international co-productions. The signal that the door is actually cracking open: a major U.S. distributor picks it up at Cannes this week. The signal that it isn't: the film gets sold quietly to a streamer in a non-English-speaking territory and never plays a U.S. theater.

Your non-US story of the day, and it's wild. Per Variety, Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar — the 51-year-old Tamil cinema superstar known to fans as Vijay or "Thalapathy" (Commander) — has delivered the most seismic electoral debut in Tamil Nadu's history. His party, TVK, won the state election, and Vijay is now staking a claim to form the government and become Chief Minister (think state governor, but with significantly more power).

Scale check: Vijay's fanbase rivals any Hollywood A-lister's in sheer devotion. This is the Indian equivalent of Dwayne Johnson actually running for president — except Vijay won. A massive story in South Asia and across the Indian diaspora, and one barely registering in Western entertainment coverage. If he's sworn in, it's one of the most extraordinary celebrity-to-politician transitions in modern history. If the result is contested or coalition math shuts him out, watch for whether he stays in politics or retreats to film — that's the tell on whether this becomes a movement or a footnote.

In the middle of all the Bezos discourse, something genuinely lovely happened. Per Rolling Stone, Sabrina Carpenter and Stevie Nicks performed "Landslide" — the 1975 Fleetwood Mac song Nicks wrote about uncertainty and change — with Carpenter also running through "Espresso," "Please, Please, Please," and "House Tour." Two women at completely different points in their careers, sharing a stage at the most-watched fashion event of the year. Even people furious about Bezos paused for it. The clips are everywhere — and as a soft-power moment for Carpenter's transition from pop hit-maker to legacy artist, it's hard to script better than this.

A vintage Versace gown floating past a tackled protester, 300 bottles of fake urine sitting somewhere in the Met's loading dock, and Stevie Nicks gently destroying a roomful of billionaires with a song from 1975. That lawyer who described a child sexual assault trial as a "massive win" had one of the night’s more surreal lines.

Stay messy.

Forward this to the friend who's been texting you Met Gala screenshots since 9pm.