Decoder Ring: Sad Jennifer Aniston

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2018

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jennifer Aniston’s story had it all: Heartbreak, secrecy, sex, betrayal. But what it also had was a new kind of tabloid: Us Weekly and its copycats. Brad Pitt leaving Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie would have been a huge Hollywood scandal no matter when it happened, but it became an even bigger one because it was turbocharged by these tabloids. Almost 15 years later, the tabloid In Touch ran an issue with the headline “Brad Stuns Jen! Marry Me again!” What is going on? How is it still going on? Why is it still going on? This is the last episode of Decoder Ring for 2018. See you in the new year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Pepsi Max. Christmas is great, but there's loads of ways to make it better.
0:08.0	Like sneaking some chili into the gravy for some extra ink, or building a playlist that will even get your
0:14.8	none up on the table. Or just cracking open an ice cold Pepsi Max.
0:20.1	Christmas.
0:23.0	Better with Pepsi Max.
0:27.0	This podcast contains explicit language. In 2002, Mara Reinstein, a young journalist who was working at teen people,
0:40.0	walked by a newsstand and noticed a magazine she hadn't paid much
0:44.3	attention to before. Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, mind you this was still
0:48.2	the height of friends and it was them on the cover and the headline was,
0:53.5	Will They Ever Had Babies?
0:55.1	It was a May 27th 2002 issue of Us Weekly.
0:59.2	Us Weekly had recently made itself over
1:01.4	from a monthly magazine
1:02.6	into a weekly one, a magazine that was devoted to celebrities,
1:06.0	but that didn't adore them.
1:07.8	Us was funny and trashy and impertinent.
1:10.4	It had the point of view of your curious, shameless obsessed friend and I remember walking by that cover and just thinking it was so intrusive and it's none of our business I was so high I will never work at a place like that and then I wound up working at us.
1:26.0	Morrow is a senior writer and then deputy editor at us for 15 years.
1:30.0	She's still the magazine's movie critic and she was there as it became a
1:33.8	genuine cultural and publishing phenomenon. First day I started us was July 30th of
1:39.6	2002. That September, so not even two months, was the season premiere of Saturday Night Live hosted by Matt Damon.
1:50.0	In Matt Damon's monologue, he referenced an Us Weekly story.
	...

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