Sharon Stone reveals how she was 'super-sexually' abused by her grandfather, was almost killed after a stroke and her mother's shocking last words to her in scandalous interview
'Mom, Dot, actually died a few months ago but I was only ready to tell the public about it now because I always get my mad feelings first when people die.'
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The Guardian
13 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I am tough' – Emma Raducanu on legacy of US Open win, stalking ordeal and why therapy won't help her
For four arduous years, so much of Emma Raducanu's life has played out in public. Every decision relating to her career has been dissected and debated. The most banal details surrounding her personal life have been transfigured into headline news. In order to find herself on and off the tennis court, Raducanu has had to learn how to tune out the noise, which at times can be deafening. Only one month ago at Wimbledon, the discourse surrounding the 22-year-old reached diabolical lows. Even though her on-court performances were strong, it was impossible to escape the speculation surrounding her personal life. In the bowels of Center Court at the Cincinnati Open, I offer my own blunt perspective: I have never cringed as much as I did while watching people trying to pry into her romantic relationships at the All England Club. 'Yeah, and Cam's questions, too,' Raducanu responds, laughing. 'That was terrible. Terrible.' She was referring to her compatriot Cameron Norrie's post-match press conference, when a reporter asked him whether he was dating Raducanu. Norrie, who was being supported in his player box that day by his long-term partner, was as baffled as he was bemused. For Raducanu, though, such brazen intrusiveness from strangers has simply become part of her everyday life. 'I know, I know,' she says, smiling. 'I guess it comes with the territory, people being so curious. I think they're more curious about this news than any tennis results and tennis news. But I just keep to myself, my private life to one side. It's always funny when people try to find something out, but I try not to read into it so much.' That curiosity is not isolated to the internet and tabloids. When Raducanu is out in London, paparazzi will find her, even when she is doing nothing more than stepping on to a 345 bus somewhere in Wandsworth. 'It's really freaky, because you don't know they're there. And then you'll see a photo of yourself the next day, and you'll be like: 'There's no way they were there,'' she says. Considering her well-documented encounters with stalkers – one was arrested and handed a five-year restraining order after stealing items from her front door in 2021 and another fixated person followed her across four different countries earlier this year – Raducanu has genuine concerns regarding her safety: 'After the Dubai incident, that was probably the worst [public attention] I've had,' she says. 'I remember straight afterwards, I found it very difficult going out. I definitely had a bit of a leftover lag effect. But I've been a lot more astute, a lot more, I'd say, safe and I have someone with me. I don't really go out on my own as much. No solo walks. Just always having someone watching my back.' Everything leads back to those three fateful weeks at the US Open in the summer of 2021, where Raducanu became the first qualifier to win a grand slam title in the open era. The spoils of victory were significant but Raducanu's rapid success yielded considerable challenges. Along with the difficult results and constant criticism, her body constantly betrayed her. In 2023, after struggling physically for a long time, she underwent surgeries on both wrists and her left ankle. While she tried to prove herself on the court, Raducanu says, people within her team would tell her she was not tough. 'I was obviously, like: 'Oh, no, I am tough enough,'' she says. 'It wasn't good to hear, because I always prided myself on being a hard worker and being tough. And I believe I am. I actually think it was more the people around me that were incorrect, and it led me to having three surgeries and double wrist surgery. I was overtraining and just covering it up, not saying I was in pain, even when I was. So it was really tough to hear. But as I've grown with experience, I kind of realised my body a bit more and trusted myself a bit more.' Mentally, things were even more challenging. As she failed to follow up her breakthrough victory with similar results, there were times when her mind twisted her US Open triumph into a negative memory, the source of her struggles. It was not until this year that she understood how to focus on her improvement and daily work, however gradual, rather than comparing every result with the 2021 US Open. Still, it remains a work in progress. 'It's [comparisons to the US Open] something that never fully leaves you,' Raducanu says. 'I think it's been four years now, I don't think it's fully gone away. Maybe in a few years, maybe when I'm older, more mature, but it's hard to put that aside completely. It's always in the back of your mind, but it's more just being aware of those thoughts and then not letting it crash your day or ruin the work that you're doing, and bringing it back to what I'm doing now, and the process.' Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Considering her many difficulties, an obvious question is whether sports psychology or therapy have been a part of her life over the past few years. 'I've tried. I've tried,' she says. 'I've obviously been recommended to do it a lot, with what I went through. It was something that not many people, well actually, no one has gone through, which is probably the reason I did two sessions and I stopped. I was like: 'Look, these guys, they don't relate.' And, to be honest, no other athlete has done what I've done, so I don't know why I'm taking advice from them. So I was like: 'OK, well, the only person who can help me is myself.'' For a long time the four defining cities of Raducanu's life were listed in her biographies across her social media platforms. Her parents, Ion and Renee, originally come from Bucharest, Romania, and Shenyang, China, respectively while she was born in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in London, England. Her mother's solo immigration from China to Canada has been an inspirational tale throughout her life. 'I would say it's funny when people ask where you're from,' she says. 'Obviously, I feel British. I've grown up there, But there are certain things, the way I think, I don't think I am completely. So you have a little question about your identity. But I try not to read too much into it and try to just take the best from all the different worlds that I've been exposed to and grown up in.' Regardless of the subject at hand, Raducanu frequently notes the support and significance of her parents. She describes her upbringing as rigid and strict, but their tough love has made her the person she is today. 'I was always brought up with really high standards, high expectations of myself, not much sympathy,' says Raducanu. 'So when I was younger, that was tough, and even now. But I think it really shaped me to be the player I am, the person I am; pretty down to earth. They never got impressed by anything glitzy or high or anything.' Both Raducanu's parents worked in finance and they passed on their numerical, logical mindsets. Over the past few years, however, part of her evolution as an adult has been understanding herself as a person. Her injury layoff in 2023, which initially seemed like a catastrophe, turned out to be essential for her personal development. Raducanu spent her time away from tennis travelling, including a long trip to China, trying different hobbies and gradually learning more about herself. She learned that she is also creative, which has significantly influenced her playing style on the court. 'I kind of discovered the more artistic side – the piano, the painting, the reading, the philosophy, all of those things,' she says. 'I really think it opened my eyes to another world. Now I'm kind of seeing how I can find an area where those two intersect, and have the creative side but also have the quantitative side.' With age and experience, Raducanu also has a greater understanding of her preferences when making general decisions. While discussing her decision making, Raducanu's mind shifts to another source of criticism: her coaching history. 'I'm a lot more clear on what I do and don't like,' she says. 'The experiences that I've had with different coaches … People love to say I've had so many different coaches but if I went into the details of a lot of them, people would not be saying the same thing. I just don't do that, because I don't want to 'out' these people. So I keep it to myself.' Is it ever tempting? 'When you see things like: 'Oh, Emma on her ninth coach', I'm like: 'Guys, come on.' Certain ones don't count. If you've had a trial, you don't have to carry on after the trial. A few have been trials, a few have been other situations. I just try and take the high road,' she says. Then she laughs. 'And try to do what the royal family would do.' After years of rolling with the punches and gradually coming to understand herself, Raducanu seems to finally be in a positive place again. She speaks effusively about the great enjoyment she has found in her consistent daily work and she has thrown herself into becoming the best player she can be each day. Raducanu's results are reflective of that shift and her ranking is on the rise. Her time in Cincinnati, her first week with her new coach, Francisco Roig, ended with a colossal three-hour battle with Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1, where she narrowly lost 7-6 (5) in the final set. Over the next few days, she will return to New York for the US Open more self-assured than she has been since she won the title. Our second conversation ends with a final question on Raducanu's ambitions for the next few years beyond her results. After a beat, she shrugs. The hope, she says, is that the passion and joy she now feels each day about her daily work will endure. 'I want to continue for the next few years to just keep enjoying because I would rather not do anything else or be anywhere else,' she says. 'I see my friends, like, somewhere in the south of France, and they're chilling on a boat or whatever, and I'm just like: 'OK, well, it looks amazing,' but when I'm putting in double session practices with the people around laughing, that fills me up so much more. So I'm really happy to have gotten to this place and [I want] to just continue that.'
The Independent
36 minutes ago
- The Independent
RushTok backlash: Why sororities aren't letting prospects post
Kylan Darnell became an overnight celebrity in the TikTok niche that documents the glitzy, ritualistic recruitment process for sororities. As a 21-year-old rising senior four years later, she's taking more of her sorority life offline. Darnell has until now been the embodiment of RushTok, a week-long marathon that has teens at schools around the country meticulously documenting their efforts to land a cherished spot in a sorority during the colorful, girly and enigmatic recruitment process known as rush week. Reactions to the content that once catapulted her to fame — depicting her life as a Zeta Tau Alpha member at the University of Alabama — had become so negative that it was affecting her mental health, she said. 'This year it was just like a whole different level of hate," Darnell said. Citing a need to protect prospects from harassment, many sororities have made similar moves, issuing a de facto ban against talking to the press or posting on social media during rush week at Alabama, where almost 13,000 students participate in the nation's largest on-campus Greek life. A centuries-old tradition Across the country, rush is typically a 10-day event where 'prospective new members' try out sororities through rounds of activities prescribing a strict slate of outfits and etiquette. In the lead-up, girls often submit "social resumes" and letters of recommendation from sorority alums. Participation often requires an eye-opening price tag. After spending sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on outfits, makeup and plane tickets, each of this week's 2,600 recruits paid $550 to participate. It's non-refundable if they don't get picked. If accepted, they'll pay an average $8,400 a semester to live in the sorority house, or $4,100 if they live elsewhere, according to the Alabama Panhellenic Association. The pressure can be so intense that an industry of consultants now helps girls navigate the often mysterious criteria for landing a desired sorority. Some charge up to $10,000 for months of services that can begin in high school. Throughout rush, many events are invite-only. At any point, girls can get a dreaded call informing them they've been dropped — that a sorority is no longer interested in letting them join. Matches are finally made on bid day as prospects rank top choices and sororities make offers. Morgan Cadenhead, now 20, gained such an audience on RushTok despite being dropped that she covered most of her tuition with income from social media. Then came the social cost as she was slammed online for criticizing Greek life. Now the marketing major — featured on Lifetime's 'Sorority Mom's Guide to Rush!' — said she's looking for offline work. A zealous TikTok following A fixation with rush was renewed when sororities resumed in-person recruiting after the pandemic. Social media became flooded with 'outfit of the day' and 'get ready with me' videos showing sorority members and recruits in well-lit rooms, sometimes flaunting exorbitantly priced designer wear or pieces purchased on Amazon, always precisely curated. Alabama's Greek life got attention before, when its traditionally white sororities racially integrated, accepting their first Black members in 2013. Targeted by protests following allegations of racial discrimination, the university agreed with the Justice Department in 2016 to encourage diversity. Today, Black students outside of traditionally Black sororities and fraternities represent 2% of the total Greek membership, the university website says. Meanwhile, online attention to rush has led to books, a polarizing documentary and the reality television series, widening the appeal of sororities in the South in particular, according to Lorie Stefaneli, a New York City-based consultant who flies to Tuscaloosa each year for rush. Stefaneli coaches girls from around the country, and about a third of her clients enroll at Alabama. She says many are drawn by the vibrant depictions of sisterhood, showing female friendships that can ensure girls feel seen and supported. 'That's the reason why a lot of them want to go to Alabama, is because they see it on TikTok,' Stefaneli said. Recruits told to stop posting — or else If they gain enough followers to become social influencers, RushTok participants can earn ad revenue and brand deals. Darnell's posts brought her financial independence, more than covering the $58,000 it costs her annually to attend Alabama from out-of-state. Rush can be fun and help girls build confidence, but it's also an 'emotional rollercoaster,' especially for girls who feel they need to reveal themselves to a massive audience, Stefaneli said. She answers phone calls at all hours of the night during rush week. 'I'm literally a therapist, I'm talking these girls down from a ledge,' she said. Numerous incoming freshmen told The Associated Press this week that they were expressly prohibited from speaking with the media or even posting about rush at Alabama. Darnell said the most selective 'Old Row' houses will automatically drop prospects who do. 'Now a lot of girls just come to the university to be influencers,' she said. 'It kind of gets in the way of sisterhood.' Some incoming freshmen — including Darnell's 19-year-old sister Izzy, with a vast social media following of her own — have chosen to post anyway, satisfying a demand that can reach millions of views within days. Izzy Darnell — who wouldn't share her choices for sorority ahead of Saturday's bid day — said her older sister's acumen has equipped her to navigate criticism and potentially predatory business deals. But she worries about how other girls might handle the fame and money. 'I just fear what some girls will do because they think they have to,' Izzy Darnell said.
The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I'm the one to beat': is Taylor Swift's Showgirl era set to take h to even greater heights?
Taylor Swift's podcast interview with her American football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce, this week yielded plenty of tidbits for fans. Across two hours of loose chat on New Heights, the show Kelce helms with his brother Jason – also a football player – Swift revealed she was obsessed with sourdough and lurked on baking blogs. The couple spent the summer with her family, caring for her 73-year-old father, Scott, after he had a quintuple heart bypass. She gave Kelce a lesson on Hamlet and taught him how to avoid internalising speculation about their two-year relationship. You could call them the tentpoles of the 35-year-old pop star's brand: literary passions and professional self-awareness. One surprising revelation came near the end. Until the record-breaking 149-date Eras tour that Swift mounted from 2023-24, she said she had 'never allowed myself to say: 'You've arrived. You've made it.'' Being the only artist to win the Grammy for album of the year four times hadn't done it; not the records broken, the acclaimed shifts from country to mainstream pop to indie. Nor her staggeringly successful campaign to re-record her first six albums to devalue their master recordings, sold by her first record label to an industry nemesis, and then on to a private equity company. 'But the Eras tour,' she said, 'I was like, this is nothing like what I've experienced before. It was so much better than anything else.' Eras leapfrogged becoming the first billion-dollar tour to become the first $2bn tour. That would be plenty of cause for celebration and a good long rest. So would, as Swift announced in May, finally owning the rights to those first six albums, having successfully negotiated to buy the asset outright. (It ended her re-recording project: her 2006 debut is done and waiting, and she barely started 2017's Reputation.) Her legacy isn't just culturally assured, but materially secure. But Swift evidently isn't ready to let that feeling of having 'made it' go. She appeared on New Heights to announce her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, arriving just 18 months after its predecessor and 10 months after Eras concluded: she is apparently congenitally incapable of rest, with a lot to process. The public will – correctly – have long assumed that Swift has well and truly made it like no one ever has. But the record's promised contents, intentions and release strategy are set to make Swift – and Kelce alongside her – hysterically famous at a new level, capitalising on and shifting industry norms in a way that may leave her detractors researching bunkers in which to hide from it all. Swift's new album does not arrive until 3 October, but this week's edition of the industry newsletter Record of the Day led with a tongue-in-cheek congratulations to 'everyone at EMI and Taylor Swift on her latest No 1 album The Life of a Showgirl'. Supernova success is a foregone conclusion: last year's introspective The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) was the first album to pass a billion streams in its first week, reaching 1.76bn. Swift is beloved on an unfathomable scale. She is one of the last monocultural pop stars. You suspect she could have toured Eras for five years and still sold out every night. Her devout Swifties, casual pop fans and curious rubberneckers will likely propel Showgirl past TTPD's record, such is the critical mass behind her, no matter what it sounds like. Her reign, says Annie Zaleski, the author of Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs, is unprecedented because 'she's so consistent and continuing to evolve'. But on the podcast, Swift sounded surprisingly aware of the limitations of TTPD – too wordy, too long, too downbeat – and keen to course-correct. That project, she said, had been about 'catharsis', 'mess' and 'rawness' following an apparently humiliating fling with the 1975's Matty Healy. TTPD comprised 16 songs; and on release day, Swift dropped a previously unannounced 15-track sister album, The Anthology. For Showgirl, she said she craved 'focus and discipline': just 12 songs going behind the scenes of her Eras life, with 'melodies that were so infectious you're almost angry'. She made a surprising admission about her recent quality control: 'Keeping the bar really high is something I've been wanting to do for a very long time.' Swift recorded Showgirl with the Swedish co-producers Max Martin and Shellback in Stockholm around Eras' spring 2024 European run. The second of her three dates in the Swedish capital was the 89th date of the Eras tour: she named her fifth album, partly produced by the Swedes, 1989 after her birth year. Given the endless number games she plays, sowing numerology clues for fans setting up her future movements, you can assume the scheduling was no accident. Martin and Shellback co-produced Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017), homes to her biggest pure-pop smashes, among them Style, 22, and Blank Space. Her first subsequent album without them, 2019's playful Lover, was regarded as ending that imperial period. Since then, Swift's music has grown more muted and experimental, often in collaboration with the producers Jack Antonoff and the National's Aaron Dessner, as if she were trying to carve out a sustainable future for a 30-something songwriter: 2020's folksy Folklore and Evermore, the dusky pop of 2022's Midnights, TTPD. They spawned no comparable radio hits; her biggest in recent years is Lover's Cruel Summer, never officially released as a single but adopted as a fan favourite. Swift now seems to be framing those records as a phase – her art school years. The Showgirl era seems to be an attempt to recapture the kind of musical ubiquity where little kids yell your lyrics at birthday parties, as they did with 2014's Shake It Off and now do with songs such as Chappell Roan's Hot to Go! 'My business is making music and taking care of my fans and I have ways of monitoring what they want from me and how best to entertain them, which is my job,' she told the Kelces. Eras was divided into segments reflecting each of her albums (except her 2006 debut): imagine it as a 149-night focus group. Swift's monitoring also cannot have failed to note that her brand of hermetically sealed, grown-up pop has been ceding ground to Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx, who have seized culture's centre with less inhibited and far rowdier hits than the exacting Swift has ever made. Or perhaps ever could: one insurmountable difference is that Roan and xcx are unlikely to ever monitor fan desire or cater to it. And Martin, despite being second only to John Lennon and Paul McCartney for having the most US No 1 singles, has waned as a hitmaker. 'I don't think she can get ahead of those artists because she's such a millennial pop star,' said a publicist for comparably superstar acts who asked to remain nameless. 'She can't create trends like those younger artists because they have a lot less to lose.' There is a sense that Swift is catching up: that she's clocked criticisms, read the room. She released 19 physical variants for TTPD, and was accused of exploiting fans and damaging the environment with excess vinyl production, a practice Billie Eilish has called 'wasteful'. Showgirl appears to have a fairly industry-standard four. She is also competing with herself: if there is a tour, says the music business expert Eamonn Forde, it will have to take a significantly different form to Eras – residency-style, perhaps Vegas or in a bespoke venue, as recently done by Adele – to avoid unfavourable comparisons to the biggest tour of all time. Swift drew mass media coverage for her appearances at Kelce's games with the Kansas City Chiefs, prompting some aggrieved football fans to boo whenever she appeared on the jumbotron. In a trailer for her episode of New Heights, traditionally a sports show, Swift joked: 'I think we all know that if there's one thing that male sports fans want to see in their spaces and on their screens, it's more of me.' Unluckily for them, the brand-building between Kelce and Swift looks set to make their association unavoidable. New Heights is part of their lore: after Kelce tried and failed to land a meeting with Swift after an Eras show, he told listeners he wanted to meet her. Intrigued, she took him up on it. The synchronicity began. It can be no mistake that Kelce's cover of GQ magazine landed the same week as Swift's podcast. Meanwhile, Swift rarely gives interviews: New Heights offers a mutually beneficial space where the couple wield full control, albeit with a soft touch: giving cute disclosures, such as his love of wild otters or her running to tell him about getting her masters back when he was gaming with the boys. The moment capitalised on the prevailing trend for A-listers to reserve their media engagements for fairly fannish video podcasts, making traditional journalists fear for their jobs as they dutifully write up any news lines. Premiering Wednesday night in the US, the episode livestream crashed; within 24 hours it had 13m YouTube views, not including other podcast platform stats. The value to advertisers is huge, especially in anticipation of future Swift revelations. And Kelce, a comparatively old player at 35, is rumoured to be retiring after the coming season – his 13th year, Swift's lucky number – so will be power-brokering his post-game career. He admitted to GQ he had literally taken his eye off the ball, with underwhelming stats in his past two seasons, because he was chasing other opportunities. 'It's his Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO move,' said the publicist. 'It's future-proofing their lives. He can't be a football player for ever; she can't be a pop star for ever. It makes them a unit – look at how it worked for the Beckhams.' After a backlash around 2015-16 resulting from her beef with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Swift managed to convincingly reboot her brand: a dedicated, literary songwriter who fights for artists' rights. To onlookers outside the NFL, Kelce's is ripe for shaping from two years of dating Swift. The couple are clearly conscious of this: Kelce told GQ he had 'become way more strategic in understanding what I am portraying to people', something you may imagine constitutes pillow talk in a business-minded household. 'No man has ever said those words,' said the publicist. Kelce's image is openhearted romantic. Notably, he is Swift's first significant boyfriend to seem undaunted by her celebrity – her previous six-year relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn took place almost entirely in private. A sweet aspect of the New Heights episode was two beefy jocks being so excited by and supportive of a girly pop star. Swift joked of his public entreaty to date her that 'this is sort of what I've been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager'. The couple riffed on memes questioning Kelce's intelligence – 'it's so hot when she says big words,' he said when Swift called Folklore 'esoteric' – which is in itself very smart: positioning Kelce as lovable and non-threatening. Swift said she immediately warmed to him for not being 'judgmental', describing him as 'a vibe booster in everyone's life … like a human exclamation point'. The implication is that he could pep up your sentences if you let him into your heart. Kelce's post-football business is being everyone's boyfriend, not just Swift's. His pesky family ties to Maga Trumpists won't hurt him in the US; if Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris in the last election, were to be questioned about this, 'her argument can be that she's the leftwing voice in these rooms', the publicist said. Win-win. Although Swift seemed keen to establish some distance from the voluble TTPD era, a song from The Anthology about her and Kelce's relationship seems to outline her present mindset. 'I'm making a comeback to where I belong,' she sings on The Alchemy. 'Ditch the clowns, get the crown / Baby, I'm the one to beat … These blokes warm the benches / We've been on a winning streak.' That streak is assured: next year marks the 20th anniversary of Swift's self-titled debut, and she will inevitably release the re-recording to mark the occasion. Showgirl's successor will be her 13th album, a significant moment in her lore. There are rumours of a behind-the-scenes Eras documentary to complement the record-breaking concert movie, extending the moment's IP. Any new tour will once again recalibrate the live industry. Before Swift drops a note of music, or Kelce touches grass, they're the coming season's reigning champions.
