Quick Hits

• SNL was the only place to be last night: Taylor Swift popped up in Dakota Johnson's opening monologue as her literal breakup therapist, and the internet is already unwell about it.
• Paul McCartney finally dished on performing at Taylor and Travis Kelce's wedding — three months after the event, he's sharing inside details on how the whole thing came together, per Billboard.
• Rihanna answered EJ Johnson's Paris Fashion Week shade with exactly one word. Zero elaboration. The economy of a billionaire.
• Legends coordinated their big exits this weekend: AC/DC closed the Power Up Tour at MetLife by bringing out Dave Grohl for "Highway to Hell," while Elton John bid farewell to the stage in Mexico City.
• The men are defending their crafts: Guillermo del Toro went to bat for Iñárritu's "Digger," and Jeremy Strong says he will not be apologizing for method acting. To anyone. Ever.

What's Trending

• The Taylor/Dakota monologue was the moment everyone predicted and it still delivered: Dakota joked about her habit of dating musicians — "I am actually doing a public service by dating them because, ladies, I am saving you a lot of money on Zoloft" — before Taylor showed up and gave Travis Kelce some love with a Cleveland shoutout. Therapist era confirmed.
• Reddit is in a full nostalgia spiral over a throwback of Lady Gaga performing "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV VMAs. Seventeen years later and it still holds up as one of the greats.
• BuzzFeed's family secrets roundups are making the rounds, and the standout confession is genuinely unhinged: "I was not supposed to learn that the owners of my workplace are swingers, but we accidentally started getting personal messages on the work iPad detailing their meetups." The work iPad!!
• The New York Times' list of the best shows since 2000 got the BuzzFeed quiz treatment, and the collective confession is "Am I the only one who hasn't seen The Wire?" (No. No you are not.)

Music

• AC/DC ended their Power Up Tour with a bang at MetLife Stadium on Friday, welcoming Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl onstage for "Highway to Hell." Final show, surprise rock legend, New Jersey crowd — that's how you close out a tour.
• Sir Elton John returned to Mexico City's Estadio Banorte (formerly Estadio Azteca) a full 34 years after his debut there, thanking fans for "all the love" as he says goodbye to the stage. Billboard has the five best moments, and honestly, go read them.
• Turnstile made their SNL debut on the Dakota Johnson episode, blazing through a "Birds"/"Never Enough" medley from their Grammy-winning album Never Enough. Baltimore hardcore on network TV — love to see it.
• Episodes five and six of JAŸ-Z in 8 dropped Friday on HBO Max, with Hov and Rick Rubin peeling back the layers on the discography from Reasonable Doubt onward.
• Lawrence Rothman sat down with Variety about their new album Here Lives Love/Sawdust to Stardust, producing other artists, and the conversation with Bowie that changed everything. The lore runs deep.

Movies & TV

• Guillermo del Toro took to X to defend Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Digger" ahead of its Friday release, calling the film "daring, bold and cinematically complex" and dismissing one critical takedown as an "entirely petty" headline. GDT does not miss when it comes to defending his friends.
• The Paramount–Warner Bros. merger drama rolls on: Tony Gilroy called the deal "tragic" at the NYFF premiere of his $36M film Behemoth!, saying it will "destroy" a "healthy and beautiful business" in the name of venture capital — while European execs tell Variety they're optimistic about David Ellison's "commitment to cinema." Meanwhile, Variety reports Ellison addressed the Paramount lot about a new name, said adieu to Mike and Pam, and set the table for Barbie 2. Busy week for the studio.
• Paul Rudd told press at NYFF he stopped bringing his phone to film sets because he's "addicted like everybody else," adding "they're facilitating our own destruction." This is from his Tom McCarthy climate-crisis talkfest A Statement, but honestly the phone quote is the headline.
• Variety's review of April X — Connor Storlie's first big film vehicle since Heated Rivalry made him the internet's boyfriend — calls it a generic sci-fi clone. The fandom will hear none of it, presumably.
• Festival wire: Pierre Le Gall's love story Flesh and Fuel took the top Golden Eye prize at the 22nd Zurich Film Festival, and New York's inaugural Muslim Film Festival unveiled its lineup and jury ahead of an Oct. 11 launch at the SVA Theatre.
• Reality TV heads: Love After Lockup: Relationship Rehab is here, revisiting fan-favorite couples with help from a psychiatrist. Chaos, but therapeutic.

Celebrity Tea

• The Rihanna/EJ Johnson saga: EJ posted a TikTok complaining about RiRi being late to the Dior show at Paris Fashion Week, and Rihanna responded with a single word. One. Word. We don't need to know what it was to know it hit.
• The Beckham family chill continues to be nonexistent: Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz skipped Victoria Beckham's Paris Fashion Week show and instead painted the town rouge elsewhere in Paris. Yeah, the feud is very much still feuding.
• More wedding lore from Billboard: Paul McCartney performed "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at Taylor and Travis Kelce's wedding and is now sharing inside details three months after the fact. Casual. Just a Beatle at the wedding.
• Jeremy Strong says he doesn't feel the need to apologize to co-stars who think he's taking method acting "too seriously." The Succession method discourse enters its latest round, and he remains unbothered.

TikTok & Internet

• In sad news, Rolling Stone reports that Brooke Eby, the beloved TikTok creator and ALS advocate, has died at 37. Friends, family, and followers remember her as a defining voice in ALS awareness — she meant a lot to that community.
• Quiz corner is stacked: BuzzFeed's "guess the Taylor Swift song from just the adjectives" quiz warns it's "much, much harder than you think" (they're right, probably), plus a 2000s male heartthrobs test where Gen Z needs to hit 25/50, a '90s nostalgia quiz, and a movie-color-palette quiz that claims it can predict your generation. The gauntlet has been thrown.
• On the shopping side, BuzzFeed crowned 39 TikTok products "annoyingly good" at their jobs — including a comfy "jelly bra" and a scalp renewal brush that's apparently going above and beyond. The algorithm already knows you want them.