Their Kind of People
Why the news of Kelly and Shania came out where it did
Shinan Govani, National Post
Published: Saturday, May 24, 2008
It's the case of twin fairy tales, both made in Canada, both put asunder by People.
That Don't Impress Me Much is Shania Twain's tune du jour when it comes to her union with husband Robert "Mutt" Lange. After 14 years and some change, it's Svengali splittin' time. On the same stretch of Heartbreak Avenue? There is Kelly Rowan, an ethereal TV mom who finally became a mother in real life recently, but in the process misplaced her engagement to the nation's richest man, David Thomson. After a year, but actually not even quite so, she has his child but not his to-have-and-to-hold.
"Did you notice how they both confirmed their splits in People mag-azine?" someone asked me the other day. Indeed, I had.
Both the actress-producer and the superstar singer -- when push came to tabloid shove, and when it came time to play the game without looking like you were playing the game -- had their respective spokespersons do a dial-through to the "celebrity-friendly" product. Why? Because, well, this is the mag that struggled for legitimacy for years after it premiered in 1974 as a spinoff from Time, but now looms like the Meryl Streep of mags compared to all those other mucky glossies. Because, as far as celebrity bulletin boards go, this one's like Spago in Los Angeles -- it's been around a while, but everyone still goes. Because, perhaps, as People's editor-in-chief once declared in a Variety article, "We don't print rumours," and that when the tabloids went mad, mad, mad a few years ago about the Jen-Brad-Ang triangle, People waited until all had confirmed before they printed a single word.
"We couldn't pin it down," explained managing editor Larry Hackett later. "Do I start twitching when I see that? Sure," he added. "But I say, 'Keep your eye on the distant shore.' " (Indeed, the good karma certainly came in handy when it was time to make the Brangelina baby pics deal!)
But back to our love-lost Canadian damsels. Kelly's announcement on People.com arrived on May 13. Shania's? Two days later, the 15th. And, well, ever the Twain shall meet!
The news of the Thomson engagement-unravelling probably came as the lesser of the two shocks. Indeed, for many 'round this town, there was a doomed-from-the-start feel to the Kelly-David match, a sentiment sotto-voce'd when the two of 'em showed up last fall at the Giller Prize dinner here in Toronto. Shortly thereafter followed a pregnancy (unexpected and shrouded in secrecy even by gothic-Thomson standards), a wedding put off more than once and the birth, then, of a girl in April. (The birth of a girl? Not insignificant, I'm told, because while Thomson -- the Rosedale-sprung leader of Forbes's 10th richest in the world -- has four children care of three different women, only one is a boy. Benjamin James Ludwick Thomson, born in 2006 to second wife Laurie Ludwick, is the presumed natural heir and the future Lord Thomson of Fleet, according to the ol' bloodline's m. o.!)
Says a knowledgeable source to me, the new mom has returned to L. A. "to get her career going" again and David "will not participate in the upbringing of Rowan's child."
Meanwhile, in New Countryland, Shania's whole world has seemingly turned upside down. And while each story is its own, hers does bizarrely lockstep with Kelly's. There's the spectre of almost-unimaginable money, a princess-in-the-tower motif, the chasm between a life imagined and the way it really turns out to be. The whisper is that the ever-gorgeous Twain is determined now to leave her homestead in Switzerland -- but to go where? Back to the glare of Canada? To a remote sheep farm in New Zealand?!
Incidentally, People, as many of you probably know, reported a few days ago that there was, in fact, an Other Woman -- their "house manager!" -- who ended up coming between Shania and Mutt. And we all know how that mag doesn't "print rumours."
Source: National Post
Shinan Govani, National Post
Published: Saturday, May 24, 2008
It's the case of twin fairy tales, both made in Canada, both put asunder by People.
That Don't Impress Me Much is Shania Twain's tune du jour when it comes to her union with husband Robert "Mutt" Lange. After 14 years and some change, it's Svengali splittin' time. On the same stretch of Heartbreak Avenue? There is Kelly Rowan, an ethereal TV mom who finally became a mother in real life recently, but in the process misplaced her engagement to the nation's richest man, David Thomson. After a year, but actually not even quite so, she has his child but not his to-have-and-to-hold.
"Did you notice how they both confirmed their splits in People mag-azine?" someone asked me the other day. Indeed, I had.
Both the actress-producer and the superstar singer -- when push came to tabloid shove, and when it came time to play the game without looking like you were playing the game -- had their respective spokespersons do a dial-through to the "celebrity-friendly" product. Why? Because, well, this is the mag that struggled for legitimacy for years after it premiered in 1974 as a spinoff from Time, but now looms like the Meryl Streep of mags compared to all those other mucky glossies. Because, as far as celebrity bulletin boards go, this one's like Spago in Los Angeles -- it's been around a while, but everyone still goes. Because, perhaps, as People's editor-in-chief once declared in a Variety article, "We don't print rumours," and that when the tabloids went mad, mad, mad a few years ago about the Jen-Brad-Ang triangle, People waited until all had confirmed before they printed a single word.
"We couldn't pin it down," explained managing editor Larry Hackett later. "Do I start twitching when I see that? Sure," he added. "But I say, 'Keep your eye on the distant shore.' " (Indeed, the good karma certainly came in handy when it was time to make the Brangelina baby pics deal!)
But back to our love-lost Canadian damsels. Kelly's announcement on People.com arrived on May 13. Shania's? Two days later, the 15th. And, well, ever the Twain shall meet!
The news of the Thomson engagement-unravelling probably came as the lesser of the two shocks. Indeed, for many 'round this town, there was a doomed-from-the-start feel to the Kelly-David match, a sentiment sotto-voce'd when the two of 'em showed up last fall at the Giller Prize dinner here in Toronto. Shortly thereafter followed a pregnancy (unexpected and shrouded in secrecy even by gothic-Thomson standards), a wedding put off more than once and the birth, then, of a girl in April. (The birth of a girl? Not insignificant, I'm told, because while Thomson -- the Rosedale-sprung leader of Forbes's 10th richest in the world -- has four children care of three different women, only one is a boy. Benjamin James Ludwick Thomson, born in 2006 to second wife Laurie Ludwick, is the presumed natural heir and the future Lord Thomson of Fleet, according to the ol' bloodline's m. o.!)
Says a knowledgeable source to me, the new mom has returned to L. A. "to get her career going" again and David "will not participate in the upbringing of Rowan's child."
Meanwhile, in New Countryland, Shania's whole world has seemingly turned upside down. And while each story is its own, hers does bizarrely lockstep with Kelly's. There's the spectre of almost-unimaginable money, a princess-in-the-tower motif, the chasm between a life imagined and the way it really turns out to be. The whisper is that the ever-gorgeous Twain is determined now to leave her homestead in Switzerland -- but to go where? Back to the glare of Canada? To a remote sheep farm in New Zealand?!
Incidentally, People, as many of you probably know, reported a few days ago that there was, in fact, an Other Woman -- their "house manager!" -- who ended up coming between Shania and Mutt. And we all know how that mag doesn't "print rumours."
Source: National Post