Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: an actress has a secret, a pop star has pyrotechnics, and Katy Perry has love.
In recent editions of this newsletter, we’ve discussed a new trend in celebrity PR: the pregnancy non-announcement. Actresses like Annabelle Wallis and Elizabeth Olsen are declining to acknowledge their pregnancies, instead letting their paparazzi pics speak for themselves. My guess is that these women will also decline to share the names of their babies, whenever they are born. But would it be possible for a star in today’s world to hide the existence of a child altogether?
A blind item in a recent Columbia Journalism Review story about celebrity profiles, by Haley Mlotek, suggests it is. Behold:
One particularly intriguing conundrum happened during last year’s Hollywood awards season. A celebrity was talking candidly about her four children, and no one blinked. After the interview, a publicist called an editor to say that only two of those children are publicly known, and asked for the answer to be updated to be about the celebrity and her two children. “It’s strange, because you wonder about the celebrity’s motivation for keeping two of their four children secret,” the editor told me. “But it’s also like, if that’s going to do damage to you, then it’s truly not advantageous to us to publish it. So, sure, we can leave that out.”
Who could this be about? Some people are suggesting Rose Byrne, Teyana Taylor, or Amanda Seyfried — all actresses who were on the circuit this year who have two (known) children. Others have suggested Eva Mendes, who is not really a working actor anymore but who has been previously misquoted as having four kids when she actually has two (with Ryan Gosling).
Back in 2022, Entertainment Weekly incorrectly transcribed a quote from Mendes’s appearance on The View, where she was talking about her work “before kids” — not “with four kids.” I would pretty much believe anything about the Mendes-Gosling household — who knows what’s going on over there — but I don’t believe this blind item refers to their family.
My instinct is to take “last year’s Hollywood awards season” literally and look at the nominees and hopefuls from the 2025 season. One name jumps out at me: Felicity Jones.
Jones, 42, is a British actress who is technically a celebrity but not a tabloid magnet. She was nominated for best supporting actress at the Oscars in 2025 for her role in The Brutalist. She has two children that we know of, born in 2020 and 2022, but she has never revealed their names or shown them in public. I’ve searched high and low and can only find one paparazzi photo of her pregnant in 2020 and one photo of her pushing a stroller later that year. There are zero photos from her second pregnancy — she made no public appearances with a baby bump, and she successfully hid the whole thing until a People interview in December 2024 in which she referenced her “two very young children.” Her husband, the British director Charles Guard, has never talked publicly about their family at all.
It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that Jones had four kids in five years, but of the actresses who were on the circuit in 2025, she seems to be the one most capable of keeping her pregnancies so private that they actually become secret.
What’s your guess?
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Hilary Duff is officially on tour. If you go to a show, please write in with your experience!
Finally, I must admit that I think something is up with Katy Perry and former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau:
There was yet another detailed Us Weekly exclusive this week about their plans for a “summer of love” with their “blended family.” And then I saw these pictures…I think they could be getting ready to have a not-secret baby.
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