Alana Haim has been sitting in the front row at Louis Vuitton shows for years now, but last night marked the singer’s first time walking the runway. She made her modeling debut for the brand’s cruise 2027 show, held in the grand, first-floor galleries of Manhattan’s recently renovated Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.

The gilded Beaux-Arts mansion served as a striking backdrop for artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière’s futuristic vision of New York style through a distinctly Parisian lens. Models sporting cotton-candy-colored hair and pieces printed with Keith Haring’s iconic figures—created in collaboration with the late artist’s foundation—strutted past Rembrandts, Vermeers, and Goyas.

Almost as if to put a punctuation mark on what the show notes referred to as an exploration of “pop art, pop culture, and pop luxury: the notion of the popular as a powerful medium” Haim appeared in a bouncy purple-and-yellow minidress paired with matching yellow socks, a black choker, bucket hat, and lace-up boots. A longtime muse of Ghesquière’s, she has worn and modeled his designs before—just never on the runway. There was the official fall 2023 campaign she starred in alongside her sisters Danielle and Este, the leather pants he designed for the band’s 2022 One More Haim Tour, and countless red carpets, including the recent custom seafoam-green silk gown she wore to the New York premiere of The Drama, her latest film with co-stars Robert Pattinson and Zendaya.

The latter was in attendance at the cruise show too, part of a star-studded front row that included friends of the maison like Emma Stone, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, Chase Infiniti, Hoyeon, and Stray Kids star Felix. Here, Haim shares her photo diary from the unforgettable evening—from her pinch-me moment with Pat McGrath to post-show selfie bliss.

“Waking up on show day. Was so excited to walk that I had to make a custom shirt because I love being a Ghesquière girl!”

“Ready to go, let's do this!”

“In glam, starting to feel real.”

“Number 10 in the model lineup.”

“The icon herself touched my face…. AGAIN, PAT MCGRATH TOUCHED MY FACE.”

“I'm a model now, didn't you know?”

“Last moment before it’s time to go.”

“Ghesquière girls for life!”

“Final hat fitting before rehearsal.”

“In love with my show look.”

“Trying not to trip.”

“Show over, I didn't trip!”

“Laughing with Nicolas after the show. I still can’t believe I got to walk in a Louis Vuitton show.”

“Celebrating with my sisters after the show.”

“Thank you, Louis Vuitton, for having me. I had the time of my life!”

Rumors about an American Psycho remake may persist, but until that classic film gets its official reboot treatment, there’s another Bret Easton Ellis project in the works. The author’s 2023 book, The Shards—his first novel in 13 years following 2010’s Imperial Bedrooms—has been adapted into an FX series by Ryan Murphy.

The highly metafictional novel, which imagines a fictionalized version of Ellis as a teenager in 1980s Los Angeles at the center of a series of disturbing murders, was originally released by Ellis as a serialized audiobook on his Patreon. Following the novel's publication, it was set to be adapted into an HBO series, with Luca Guadagnino directing (the Call Me By Your Name filmmaker is also reportedly attached to the American Psycho remake). But after Ellis had a falling out with the network over creative differences, Murphy signed on as Ellis’s new co-creator. Here’s everything we know so far:

Who is in the cast of The Shards?

The cast of the 10-episode series features some newer faces alongside recurring Ryan Murphy players. Igby Rigney will play Ellis, while Richard Gere’s son, Homer Gere—currently making his mark on another gritty teen drama with Euphoria—will play antagonist Robert. (It’s a fitting casting, given that Ellis has frequently spoken of the influence Gere’s American Gigolo character had on his work). The main cast is rounded out by Graham Campbell, Hayes Warner and Wes Bentley, with Kaia Gerber, Evan Rachel Wood, Jordan Roth, Owen Painter, and Daniel Dale in the supporting ensemble.

What will the plot of The Shards be?

Assuming the series sticks to the novel’s general structure, The Shards will tell the dark coming-of-age tale of a fictionalized, 17-year-old Ellis as he tries to determine the identity of a serial killer targeting classmates and families at his privileged prep school. The killer, known as “The Trawler,” plucks off members of Ellis’s elite inner circle one by one in increasingly disturbing ways. Set in 1981 Los Angeles among the children of Hollywood’s upper crust of directors, producers, and writers, The Shards is considered a thematic and tonal return to Ellis’s Less Than Zero and the nihilistic work that first made him a literary darling. With Murphy’s touch, the series is set up to be particularly gruesome.

How is Bret Easton Ellis involved?

Ellis is credited as a creator and writer on the series.

Is there a release date for The Shards?

The Shards wrapped production in March and is slated to premiere on FX in August 2026.

Havana Rose Liu wore red to Cannes for a reason. On Monday, May 18, the 28-year-old actor embraced full glamour in a custom blood-red Balenciaga silk chiffon gown with a dramatic drape and a wavy pinned-up bob. It was her first time at the festival, for the premiere of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, and to calm her nerves, she reached for the color that always grounds her.

“We were deciding between a red dress and a black one, and I was honestly terrified of the red look because it just felt so attention-grabbing. But red is really important to me. I always have a bit of red on, no matter what,” Liu told W the next day while rushing through the Nice airport.

The tradition traces back to her childhood and Chinese heritage. “It was always symbolically important in my household. Most people in my life wear something, even just a red string,” she explained. “I started to get more superstitious as life started to feel bigger and bolder, and it feels like a tiny tether to myself. When there’s no control at all, it’s a way of rooting myself in some sort of ritual.”

Still, committing to the gown took some convincing. “I asked too many people in my life [which dress to wear],” she said. “I was feeling really, really scared of it. But everyone was like, ‘Wear the red dress. Just do it. It’s Cannes, baby!’”

That included her co-star Charles Melton, who had previously attended the festival for 2023’s May December. Unlike fellow Cannes first-timers Sophie Thatcher, Kristine Froseth, and Diego Calva, Melton knew exactly what to expect. “Charles feels like an older brother to me,” Liu said. “Or maybe I'm the older sister. But he was very comforting to all of us, giving us advice about how it would all go down at the premiere.” When it came to the dress, he told her to “go big or go home.”

It’s a fitting mantra for Liu, whose ascent has had its own instinctive ‘just do it’ quality. The New Yorker was discovered in Washington Square Park while attending NYU, signed to IMG, and soon landed the cover of Vogue Italia. Since then, she’s built an impressive indie résumé with films like Bottoms, Lurker, No Exit, and the upcoming Tuner, opposite Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman.

In Her Private Hell, Liu plays an actor being stalked by a serial killer played by Melton. The surrealist thriller marks Refn’s first feature since 2016’s The Neon Demon. “He reminded me of the deep and undying value of just being a true and unique artist,” Liu said of working with the Danish director. “We're in this time where IP is being repeated. We're really trying so hard to make things that people will go to see. I also love those movies, but there's this other area of filmmaking that I hope never constricts.”

It’s a sentiment that seemed to resonate at the premiere, where the film received one of the festival’s marathon standing ovations. Whether it lasted seven or 12 minutes depends on who you ask, but to Liu it felt like “a thousand years. I fully vacated the premises of my body. I’ll have to watch videos of the evening to see what I was saying, if my eyes were closed. It was like an illusion—crazy.”

Liu is the first to admit that she still isn’t fully comfortable with the spotlight. “Going into it, I was very intimidated by the whole thing,” she said. “It’s the most dramatic, celebratory landscape for film—so lavish, sparkly, and amazing. I initially had this desire to hide. But all my friends and family told me, ‘You have to step into your light and try to just enjoy it. Go all the way, and meet it where it asks you to meet it.’”

Next up is the New York premiere of Tuner, in which Liu portrays a young woman who plays the piano in order to connect with her late grandmother. The role carries personal significance for the actor, who dedicated the performance to her paternal grandmother. To prepare for the whirlwind ahead, she plans to return to familiar rituals.

“I usually walk the Brooklyn Bridge if I’m feeling out of sorts,” Liu said. “The idea of opposite action has been really heavy on my mind: when you feel like shrinking or hiding, step out, that sort of thing. Even though my desire is to hide in my house and sleep under the covers for three years, I'll be going on my walk, maybe doing a bit of meditation, and then going to my next premiere.”

This episode’s cold open belongs to Alamo, and it does what Euphoria used to do best: a flashback sequence introducing the backstory that makes a character tick. In this case, we meet young Alamo (Ca’Ron Jaden Coleman) as a child of the ’70s, whose glamorous mother with beaded braids (Danielle Deadwyler) is “the coldest female Alamo ever knew,” Rue narrates. Alamo’s mother introduces him to Preston (Kwame Patterson), a kind man with terrible burn scars on his face.

At first, we might assume the story is going one way: with Alamo’s mom doing whatever it takes to please an awful man, if only so he’ll provide “hot meals and shoes that fit.” But we soon learn Preston is a good person. He wins over young Alamo’s trust, buying him ice cream and taking him to church, where the choir sings “Let My People Go.” When Preston finally gets a big settlement from his old employer—a chemical plant where he was disfigured on the job—the family celebrates with a newly furnished apartment, plenty of Cartier jewels for mom, and a promise of a bright future.

Upon returning from a beach vacation (the happiest time in Alamo’s life, Rue tells us) they find they’ve been robbed. Immediately, Alamo’s mom takes off, leaving Preston sobbing on his knees, begging her to let him fix it. She takes young Alamo to another man’s home, which is filled with all their stolen belongings. This man is his mom’s real boyfriend, and Alamo realizes the whole relationship was a setup. “It was just one long con, and the real mark wasn’t even Preston,” Rue narrates. “It was Alamo. He believed her.” A young Alamo pulls a gun out of a holster while lying back on his new bed as he promises himself: “For as long as he lived, never again would a bitch outsmart him.”

It’s the setup for an episode that’s mostly foreshadowing what’s to come in the season’s final two episodes. Back in the present tense, we’re right where we left off, with Rue buried up to her neck in the dirt and Alamo threatening to pummel her head off. To earn back his trust, Rue gives up Faye, telling Alamo that she was the driver of the getaway car and that Rue can get Alamo’s money back. She calls Faye and uses the memory of Fez to guilt-trip her into going along with Rue’s plan: having Alamo’s crew make a 3-D-printed key for Laurie’s safe. Faye hesitates, telling Rue that Wayne (Toby Wallace) has been trying to get her pregnant and even gave her a swastika tattoo; like every scene with Faye, even falling in love is played grotesquely and for laughs. But eventually, Faye agrees to do it as long as she gets to keep some of the money.

Laurie and her inbred crew pull up to Alamo’s house for a meeting. Rue quietly pulls out her phone so the DEA can listen as Laurie presents Alamo with her plan. Alamo runs a sham company, Gold Rush Medical Services, which he uses to take his girls to Mexico for cheap plastic surgery. Laurie wants him to transport 80 kilos of fentanyl for one last big job before the border is set to close, according to the news. Alamo surprisingly agrees, because Laurie threatens to blackmail him by sending whatever was in that safe to the FBI (at this point, it must’ve been more than just guns, drugs, or money).

The season circles back to the fentanyl of it all. Alamo asks Laurie why she wants to kill her customers by selling them such a deadly drug. “The real question is, why does the customer want to buy something that can kill them?” Laurie says. “It’s supply and demand—don’t blame me.”

Rue meets up with the DEA guys under the bridge again, and they’re very pleased with her. They say if “everything goes to plan, these people will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.” As for Rue? She’s done her job and kept her word, so the U.S. attorney should look favorably at her case. For the time being, she just has to sit tight. “You did good, kid,” they say, and it’s the first real win for Rue in a long, long time. She closes her eyes and thanks God.

Then Rue tells us she tried to warn Maddy about Alamo, but Maddy says she’s not afraid of him. Maddy’s goal, Rue says, is “to milk these girls for every penny, and get Alamo to back her business, one where she didn’t have to answer to anyone.” Maddy brings Cassie to the Silver Slipper and directs her, Kitty, and Magick in a raunchy photo shoot. Maddy tells Alamo that it would be good to give the girls some time off so she can take them out, introduce them to people, and start building their profiles. They work six days a week, after all. But Alamo scoffs and accuses Maddy of trying to steal his girls. Bishop seems to vouch for Maddy, keeping her safe—for now.

We cut suddenly to Jules’s loft. “Against all odds, life was looking okay. Maybe every mistake I made had led me to the right place after all,” Rue narrates as she watches Jules paint another large canvas. The two start getting into it, again, over the nature of their relationship. Rue tells Jules that she thinks her problem is having no responsibility to anyone but herself. “I think that’s why I have so much anxiety and depression,” Rue says. “If I had kids, I think it’d be different.” Jules tells her that Rue isn’t ready for kids, but Rue says no one’s ready for kids, they just do it. “I just want good old-fashioned American problems,” Rue says.

Jules points out that Rue is barely sober, and what she’s talking about is “a fantasy.” Rue snaps back that Jules is the one living a fantasy—being in a relationship with a married man. Rue says she wants to wake up to someone she loves—someone who depends on her and expects her to be the best version of herself. “I have to live for something greater than myself,” Rue says. Jules isn’t impressed. She says that the last time they slept together (last episode) was a mistake, because it almost cost Jules her relationship and, therefore, her apartment and “everything she’s been working towards.”

This setup makes Jules “a little toy that Ellis keeps locked in a little room,” Rue says, adding that he will never leave his family—a fact that Ellis has also made quite clear. When Rue says Jules’s role is to sit at home and paint until Ellis comes home and fucks her, Jules slaps Rue across the face, knocking her canvas on top of her. “Ellis is going to be here in 45 minutes, so I suggest you get the fuck out of my painting,” she tells Rue. Jules isn’t ready to leave her fantasy yet, but the evidence is building that it’ll be taken from her soon, whether she likes it or not.

Cassie, meanwhile, is fully living hers. It’s her first day on the set of L.A. Nights, and though she only has a few lines, “she studied them religiously,” Rue tells us. Cassie walks into her scene with Dylan Reid (Homer Gere), whose character says a line to the effect of: “You’re not the first girl to come running once the honeymoon is over.” Cassie is viscerally triggered, recalling Nas making the same honeymoon remark to her the day of her wedding when she first found out that Nate was a fraud. She gets thrown and starts muttering, “He just lied and lied and lied. I did everything for him, and what did I get in return? A bloody nose on my wedding night.”

Everyone on set starts flipping through their scripts, trying to figure out what’s happening. But suddenly, Dylan starts improvising with her. “I find it rather compelling,” Patty Lance (Sharon Stone) says from behind the monitor. “Let’s just let it roll.” Cassie keeps going, telling Dylan—in character—that she deserved what happened to her because she stole him (Nate, but on L.A. Nights, Jagar) from her best friend. Patty says the scene doesn’t fit with the whole script, but “it’s giving me the feels. I think she’s got something.” Lexi is watching her sister become a star in real time, in disbelief.

Everyone on set is both disturbed and impressed. Patty and her producer meet with Cassie after the scene, and Lexi immediately blows up her sister’s spot, telling them that Cassie is on OnlyFans, posing nude and making fetish content. “So you’re a sex worker,” Patty says, but Cassie demurs: “I’m a performer that uses my body to tell stories. The hardest part is how people treat me, even my own family. But it’s also very empowering.” Patty is fascinated and says it sounds like a new form of feminism. “There’s a whole wave of people like me,” Cassie says. Patty smells a story: “That’s a very interesting character arc,” she says. She and the producer are lighting up, comparing Cassie to Jane Fonda in Klute, a “young hustler with a secret other life,” much to Lexi’s chagrin.

Patty says she wants to write Cassie into the show, but only if Cassie is willing to “leave that world behind.” Cassie is over the moon, and screams, “Thank you, God! I’m gonna be famous!” on the Warner lot.

But first, she has to delete her highly lucrative OnlyFans. Back in her apartment, she wills herself to open her laptop and get rid of her account. If only she could just temporarily deactivate...? She calls Nate, who isn’t picking up, probably being beaten up again. She returns to the laptop and hits delete. It seems a shame she has to give up everything she’s built and her financial freedom—not to mention she’s once again betraying Maddy and breaking the contract she signed—but she’s betting on a different future for herself. Patty decides to give Lexi the opportunity to write Cassie’s narrative, so maybe it’ll work out for her in the end too. She likes the “racy” storyline, Patty says—which is funny, given how angry she was at Lexi just last week concerning Jules’s painting. But that’s showbiz, kid.

Back at her apartment, Lexi is talking to her friend (Gideon Adlon) about what she should do with Cassie’s character. Her friend suggests that Lexi kill her off. “If someone doesn’t die periodically, people get bored. Otherwise, it’s just talking and talking.” It certainly feels like more foreshadowing. Cassie, meanwhile, is in her apartment when she receives a delivery. She opens the box, and it’s Nate’s finger and toe, with a note that reads, “ANSWER THE PHONE.”

We see Nate at his stalled jobsite, where he is crushing the endangered flowers that have kept him from being able to build Sun Settlers, which is surely only going to make his life worse. Although really, how could it be worse? One of Nas’s goons approaches, of course, and starts beating Nate again. At this point, it’s the only kind of scene Jacob Elordi filmed for this show, aside from the ill-fated wedding.

While Rue waits for the 3-D key to be made, she stops into a church to pray. Out of nowhere, her mom calls. Finally! Rue has an emotional conversation with her, one that will be familiar to anyone who has been or has loved an addict. Rue tells her mom that she believes in God. “I just figured if he exists, then so does redemption. If there’s redemption, then there’s salvation. And I kinda need that.” Rue goes on to explain that she doesn’t want to be stuck with all the mistakes she’s made. “It’s hard to change when all you can think about is all the bad things you’ve done. I just want to be free to start over. And I want to be forgiven.” She’s crying, looking up at the stained glass windows of the church. She tells her mom that she misses her, that she’ll come home soon, and that she’s sorry. “I didn’t really realize how tough it is to be out here by yourself,” she says. Her mom tells her she’s not alone. There’s a 30-second shot of Rue’s mom (Nika King), hanging up the phone and looking sad. Alone in the church, Rue prays and cries.

At the club, Rue hands Alamo the 3-D-printed key, but he tells her he wants her to be the one to rob Laurie. G (Marshawn Lynch) hands her a dead rat that she has to feed to Alamo’s snake. The snake used to belong to a dancer named Sweet, Bishop tells her. She would take the snake home at night and sleep cuddled up with it. One day, the snake stopped eating. She took it to the vet, who said it was a perfectly healthy python. “The reason it wraps itself around you at night is because it’s sizing you up,” the vet said. “And the reason it’s not eating is because it’s preparing for a much larger meal.”

Alamo loved that story so much, Bishop says, that he bought the snake from the dancer. “It’s a reminder that you never know a motherfucker’s true intentions.” Bishop also drops that he talked to Rue’s mother, telling her “how well Rue is doing.” A threat of some sort—is that why she called?

Rue drives away later that night, listening to her Bible tapes again. The cassettes start unraveling, and as Rue fiddles with the radio, she nearly swerves headfirst into a truck, running herself off the road into the desert. She takes a moment to calm down, her life having just flashed before her eyes. Looking up, she sees a tree burst into flames. It’s her burning bush, and Rue stumbles out of the car as the flames dance in front of her closed eyes.

The episode opens with Cassie licking her toes. Within 24 hours of Brandon Fontaine tagging her, you see, she’s gained 17,000 new subscribers and counting. Maddy, her manager, has been “working her to the bone,” Rue narrates. Cue the montage of Maddy waking Cassie up early every morning to make content: ASMR of her breasts rubbing together, personalized videos doing small penis humiliation, whispering the names of men from every race and creed imaginable into a microphone—your basic OnlyFans stuff.

As hard as Cassie’s working, Maddy’s working, too—mailing off Cassie’s used underwear to fans and even offering to perform the “fart in a jar” request that one such user has made for $700. Cassie points out that no one will know the difference. It’s all part of Cassie’s big plan to get rich and famous, and also to help Nate pay back his debts. Yes, Cassie is still in contact with Nate, who, it turns out, is totally supportive of what she’s doing. He has to be, anyway—she’s been wiring him $35,000 here and there, though it’s still not anywhere near enough to get him out of trouble. Even though Cassie’s the one “bringing home the bacon,” with Nate fully cucked at home, encouraging her to make erotic videos with Brandon Fontaine, Cassie goes on a series of podcasts to promote edgy manosphere talking points.

“American men are treated like second-class citizens,” she says on one podcast, before telling a stunned Trisha Paytas, putting on her best vocal fry for her cameo, “If a man says he wants a girl who can cook or clean, he might as well be screaming the N-word.” It’s especially humorous given Cassie’s breakdown at her wedding reception, when she told Nate she wasn’t going to be a cooking-and-cleaning kind of housewife after all. It’s also clearly a meta-commentary on Sydney Sweeney’s ongoing MAGA allegations. “You sound like a Democrat,” a male podcast host says at one point. Cassie pauses before grinning and saying, “I’m not retarded.”

“You know what’s funny? The angrier these idiots get, the more money you make,” Maddy says to Cassie at one point. Are we the idiots?

Maddy clearly doesn’t think her client is the smartest, either. She tells Cassie to put “her big, sweet heart and stick it in the fucking freezer,” because Nate is going to be entitled to 50 percent of all her earnings, and he’s already leeching off her. There’s one thing Maddy and Cassie can definitely agree on: Cassie is going to be huge.

This belief gets played out in a surreal sequence, where Cassie grows into an Attack of the 50 Foot Woman-style giantess, bursting out of her catsuit and stomping all over downtown Los Angeles while helicopters try and fail to stop her. Massive Cassie shows up outside the office of a man pleasuring himself to one of her videos—a fetish video of her sticking a tiny male figurine in between her breasts—and literalizes the moment, taking her top off and pressing her building-size chest against the office windows until they burst.

"Big lady, get on your knees,” a military helicopter pilot orders Cassie. “Back away from the building and get on your knees. Lethal force will be used if you do not comply.” She brushes past him and “Jesus Saves” written in neon lights, before stomping off to the Hollywood sign, dropping to the ground and thanking God while Los Angeles burns behind her.

"She knew this was her destiny—to triumph, to conquer, to win,” Rue narrates. "The world was hers. She had finally been unleashed."

Back at Alamo’s ranch, we revisit the events of the last episode, where Rue became an informant for the DEA, and Big Eddy let the safe get robbed. So far, it’s only Big Eddy taking the heat. He’s still in the hospital after being shot in the stomach, and Alamo threatens to finish the job himself as Rue listens on. They vow again to get back at Laurie’s crew, raiding her farm and “taking back what’s theirs.” When Kidd (Asante Blackk), one of Alamo’s workers, accidentally buys him pants that don’t fit, Alamo flips out, offended that Kidd thought of him as being a smaller man than he is. Size is a theme here, and Alamo nearly kills Kidd, holding him down and stabbing the desk next to his head with an ice pick.

There’s more violence to come, though. Later, Alamo asks to see Rue alone, “for the first time since the robbery,” in what will surely be the most nerve-wracking 1:1 an employee can have with their boss. As Rue waits, she watches Bishop put on a plastic Tyvek-style suit and gather duct tape, rope, and an electric handsaw. He tells Rue he thinks she’s brought bad luck to Alamo’s crew: "I'm of the belief that certain people are cursed," he tells her. "Ever since you came around, there's been a cascade of trouble. I'm not saying you got a 666 inscribed on the back of your skull, but something about you gives me the heebie jeebies." He plugs the saw in and sends Rue on her way. We cut to Bishop (the heebie-jeebiest character since Laurie, for what it’s worth) entering a plastic-covered bathroom with his saw, where Big Eddy is bound and gagged, screaming for his life.

Rue has a conversation with Alamo, who seems to have TCM on in the background with Rita Hayworth doing her famous Gilda hair flip. There’s a redhead strewn out on Alamo’s couch, too. He tells Rue he’s “no monkey” of Laurie’s as he plays a small trumpet. He also questions Rue about Laurie’s farm, since she used to live there, and whether she can draw a map of the place. Rue says that Laurie is probably keeping the money they stole in her basement, but Alamo says, "What she got is a whole lot fucking more valuable than money."

In the next scene, Bishop is standing over a pig trough, watching the pigs eat—and presumably, they are eating Big Eddy.

In case you forgot about Rue’s DEA situation, she has a meeting with the agents under a bridge in a sketchy part of town. Rue tries and fails to get Laurie to incriminate herself over the phone so that the DEA can start a wiretap, but she finds success with Wayne, who’s lying on the couch watching Pretty Woman with Faye, and immediately references Rue being their “drug mule.” Bingo.

Cassie and Maddy have some things to clear up. Brandon has been in Cassie’s ear, trying to convince her to sign with him and his TikTok house—where he has an entire content team employed—rather than Maddy, who is an assistant and “just another Hollywood leech.” Pot, meet kettle. Cassie visits Maddy at her apartment to break the news that she’s leaving her for Brandon, catching Maddy in her lie that she lives in a doorman building. Maddy plays it cool and says she doesn’t care, then fakes a phone call canceling Cassie’s audition for LA Nights. Cassie breaks immediately, signing Maddy’s contract instead without even reading it.

There was no audition, but Maddy strong-arms Lexi into getting Cassie a chance to be on the show. Cassie shows up to the studio in a Blumarine butterfly top, playing the part of a bubbly, ditzy, bouncy blonde, reading off her measurements—37, 25, 37—and blowing kisses for the camera. But then, she breaks out a scene from Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra—Cleopatra’s “monologue of defiance.” It’s kind of…good? Lexi sees her bosses watching it on the monitors, and though they seem to be laughing at Cassie, they’re also impressed. "That's your sister?" Patti Lance asks. "If she can do Shakespeare, she can do LA Nights." Even though she’s the one who put Cassie up for the audition, Lexi is horrified and furious that Cassie used her name.

Lexi tells an ecstatic Cassie that she got the part. "I'm gonna be on TV!” Cassie screams. “This is just the beginning. You, me, LA Nights. I'm gonna be fucking famous. I'm not even gonna be able to walk down the street. I'm gonna be a household name!”

"You are literally the most selfish, narcissistic person I have ever met," Lexi tells her, preparing to walk out the door.

"But that's what it takes to make it in this town," Cassie squeals. As she stuffs more used underwear into bubble envelope mailers, she starts crying with joy.

We check in with Jules and are confronted with the limitations of her seemingly glamorous life. She and Rue are hanging out in the daytime, drinking wine and talking about high school. Jules brings up Rue’s former intimacy issues—in past seasons, you might recall, the main issue in their relationship was that Rue never wanted to have sex. Jules presses Rue on what she wants from her. "You come over here, you lie around, you look at me like you have something to say, but you never say it. I feel like I'm back in high school." She dares Rue to kiss her. "You want me? Make me yours."

The scene cuts to later at night, where Jules is moaning during sex, but it’s not with Rue. It's been a while since we've seen Ellis, or Jules’s “landlord,” as Rue called him, and unfortunately, he's back. He finds Rue’s boxers on the floor, which, for some reason, have her initials on them, and he’s angry. "You're bringing guys to my apartment and fucking them when I'm not here?"

"I give you a lot of freedom, but I got kids," he tells Jules. "I got a wife. I cannot be coming home with a fucking STD." She tells him it's not like that, but he’s livid. "I like you, but I love my family, and I will not put them at risk," he says, coldly throwing Rue's shirt at Jules, who has tears in her eyes.

We also get a quick Nate check-in. For a moment, he’s doing well. Cassie has just transferred him another $30,000, and he’s day-drinking in his pajamas, dancing to old records on vinyl. His busted-up face even looks kind of healed. But it doesn’t last long. One of Nas’s goons breaks into the house with a golf club and chases Nate up the stairs, ripping off his toe again and cutting off a finger for good measure. Outside, a little girl rides by on a tricycle down their idyllic suburban street, as Nate can be heard faintly screaming in the background. He really just can’t win.

Back at the Silver Slipper, Rosalía’s Magick finds a bag of coke in her locker and brings it to Alamo, telling him that Rue framed her. She reiterates what she was telling Big Eddy right before the robbery—that Rue was questioning Kitty about whether she was being trafficked, and that Rue can’t be trusted. It’s news to Alamo that Magick was present that night, and he gets more details from her, including a damning one for Rue: that she didn’t seem to immediately recognize the voices of Laurie’s crew.

Rue, meanwhile, is having dinner with Maddy at a diner. Maddy explains that she's removed all emotion from her dealings with Cassie. It's all business now. "Equanimity," Maddy explains. "Everything is as it should be. It's all equal." She adds that she’s “reached a state of pure harmony." Rue doesn't buy it, but Maddy says, "It all goes back to Jesus,” and reminds Rue to keep reading her Bible. "Jesus teaches us to be in the world, but not of the world, right? That's basically what I'm saying."

As they’re talking, Alamo approaches the table, spurs clinking on his boots. We’re fully in the Western noir territory promised this season. He introduces himself to Maddy and compliments her nails, joining them at the table. Maddy knows that Alamo is Rue’s boss and that he owns strip clubs, but clearly has no idea just how dangerous he is. She asks where he’s from, and he explains: “I didn't have the fortune of growing up in a safe place like Rue. Nice suburban street. Cute little house. The American dream didn't really factor for me."

"My boss knows literally nothing about me or my family," Maddy says. Alamo replies that it's important to know about your employees, "or you won't know who's working for you or against you." He’s obviously on to Rue, and he tells her that G and Bishop are waiting for her outside and are going to give her a ride somewhere vague. Rue is concerned about leaving Maddy alone with Alamo, although she really should be worried about herself.

Rue gets in the car with G and Bishop. She asks where they're going, and G says, "to another place." Not exactly comforting, and even worse, they take her phone.

Back at the diner, Maddy is opening up to Alamo. "That's what I didn't respect about my dad," she says. "He just accepted his fate." Maddy tells Alamo that the one thing missing from her life is money, and about her plan to manage more OnlyFans stars. Hollywood made $8 billion last year, and OnlyFans made $7 billion, she says. "A lot of money is being left on the table.” Alamo agrees that people are afraid of the stigma of sex work and are too caught up in being seen as "good people” to cash in. "I'm not," Maddy says. "I'm not either," he replies. Maddy and Alamo are a truly diabolical combo.

"Within six months, my top girl, Cassie, could be bringing in a million a month," Maddy tells Alamo. She shows him a picture of Cassie, and he says he has girls just like her that they could make money off of together. Maddy says she wants to “see the inventory first,” adding, "You might have some busted-ass girls." They drive off to the Silver Slipper together, where Maddy surveys the dancers like cattle at an auction. She chooses #7 and #15—Kitty and Magick, of course.

At the ranch, Bishop, G, and Kidd make Rue dig a hole “up to her throat.” It’s not looking good for Rue, and once she’s finished digging, they immediately start burying her up to her head. "I don't know what I did to deserve this, but this is extreme," she says. "Who even thinks of this shit?" Indeed. Having brokered a deal with Maddy, Alamo is back home, saddling up his horse and talking about trust. "Some people don't even deserve to be trusted," he tells the horse. It's morning now, and Rue is begging the guys to get her out of the hole in which she’s buried. Alamo picks up a riding crop with a mallet on the end and comes galloping down the hill on his horse, swinging the crop toward her head. She screams for her life, and as Alamo descends on Rue, the scene cuts to black.

Is Rue really dead? It seems unlikely—given that we still have three episodes left in the season, including a finale that’s HBO’s longest-ever episode—but anything can happen in Euphoria land. Stay tuned for next week, when we’ll find out if Maddy is an even better pimp than Alamo, and whether Nate got his toe and finger on ice quick enough this time to get them both sewn back on.

The new episode opens where we left off: with Rue in the back of a cop car waxing poetic on the nature of truth while a DEA agent and a dog search her car. As the blue and red lights flash on Rue’s forlorn face, and the K9 gets a positive on the drugs in her trunk, Rue spells out her predicament (and the theme of the episode): “People love to argue about the truth. Some say it’s just the facts. Others say it’s what’s right. Some even claim there’s no real truth at all, just opinions. While we may disagree about what the truth is, we all know when we’re telling a lie.”

She finds herself telling multiple lies as she’s fingerprinted and brought into a brightly lit room to be questioned. The DEA knows that she knows Laurie, and they know she’s been to Mexico. They even have photo evidence of her talking to a cartel member. Rue does her best to lie her way out of the situation, but she’s terrible at it. Soon, they’re telling her she’s facing 20 years in prison without parole—at least—with an additional 20 for every death she might’ve been involved in. After breaking down in tears, Rue cuts a deal. “And that is how I became a snitch,” she narrates.

The DEA gives Rue her bag back, but not before swapping out the drugs for sugar pills and laxatives. She heads back to the club, waiting for them to “be in touch.” She’s so freaked out that she can’t even be bothered to check out Alamo’s newest worker, a girl posing in a thong that we come to know as Kitty from Kansas (Anna Van Patten). Alamo is happy because he believes he’s destroyed Laurie by killing her bird, Paladin. He wants to celebrate by taking Kitty into a backroom and having sex with her, and it’s even more ominous than usual.

In a flashback, we get more details on Rue’s deal with the DEA. They hope the fake drugs will lead Alamo back to Laurie. They also installed an app on her phone to track everything and keep her bugged. The catch is that she needs to keep her phone out in the open to capture everything, which could easily be read as suspicious. She opts for a very conspicuous fanny pack that gets put in a safe. Things are not looking great for Rue, as usual.

Things also aren’t looking great for Nate, but he seems delusional about his fate. Back at the mansion, we see the newlywed sitting on his couch with stitches on his face and his bruised, bloodied toe sewn back onto his foot. “The toe is a metaphor,” he tells Cassie. “I thought that I’d lost it forever. But we were smart. We put it on ice. We took it to the hospital. And they were able to put it back on.” The metaphor, he tells a skeptical Cassie, is that “when you break something, you gotta pick up the pieces.” In other words, it’s them. Cassie sees things differently. As she kneels down to tend to his wound, she tells him that, actually, “the toe is never going to be the same.” The metaphor doesn’t mean what Nate wants it to mean. Nate is motivated by the toe to “build back better,” but Cassie points out that everything Nate has built has been built upon a lie. He finally admits one truth to her: the real amount he owes is a million dollars. “You have to keep faith in me, us, our life,” Nate says. But according to Cassie, “The fairytale’s over.”

Having been brutally let down by one love of her life, Cassie calls the other—“the one person that could help her,” according to Rue. Cassie packs her bags and leaves Nate in shag-carpet misery, telling him she’s “going to work” and jumping in Maddy’s fabulous convertible while a pair of young girls that resemble the two old friends look on. “Let’s do something about your look,” Maddy says. Finally. Maddy assembles a team to take Cassie from “the suburbs to the city,” and as the two drink champagne, Cassie gets a makeover to become her fully realized version of a glambot; the pair drives down Hollywood Boulevard in Thelma & Louise-style bliss.

We head over to the studio lot, where Lexi is offering Jules a work opportunity (at least something good came out of that wedding). She wants to commission Jules to make a painting for LA Nights, which gets 7 million viewers a week. Lexi explains that the character is inspired, improbably, by Georges Seurat, so they want Jules’s take on something in that vein. Presented with a blank canvas, Jules goes to work, and, unfortunately, her vision does not match what Lexi and her boss, Patty (Sharon Stone), wanted—to say the least. She’s painted a disturbing take on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, one that includes no fewer than 14 penises. Lexi tells her boss that Jules is trans, you see, and can’t be blamed for having such a unique vision. Despite being horrified by her work, the team handles her with kid gloves. Jules can’t fix it in time, and the scene gets pushed to the following week.

Lexi gets chewed out by her boss, who explains that Lexi’s failure to communicate with Jules cost them an hour and a half of shooting, or $56,000, or $191,000 total, all things considered. As Lexi chokes back tears, she tells her not to be a “net negative.” It feels like a meta commentary on Levinson’s own history. The first season of Euphoria famously included a scene with so many penises that it became the main headline about the show; plus, Levinson’s work on The Idol, not to mention Euphoria itself, has been plagued with delays, reshoots, and going over budget. It’s a hard lesson for Lexi to learn, and Jules, too, who takes the painting home and destroys it with red paint.

Back at Laurie’s ranch, there’s a very somber bird funeral for Paladin. Laurie’s crew vows to get revenge on Alamo. The DEA agents call Rue and threaten her with going to prison if she can’t arrange a meeting between the mortal enemies, even when she explains they’re unlikely to ever do business together again. She offers to set up a buy with a different dealer.

We learn that Cassie has taken up residence at Lexi’s apartment while she works on getting famous. She pawned her wedding ring—“took the cash, and invested it in herself,” Rue narrates. Maddy helps her create content by the pool, and Lexi is shocked by how much money women and girls make online. (Maddy cites Bhad Bhabie as an example for making $53 million her first year on OF after turning 18.) Rue shows up out of the blue and tells Maddy she needs drugs—coke, molly, heroin—“for her boss.” Lexi is again scandalized, thinking that Rue is using again (well, to be fair, she is). “Do you guys hear yourselves right now? What is wrong with you right now?” Lexi asks. “You’re looking for drugs, you’re selling yourself on your porn site, and you’re like some Internet pimp? It’s sad, and it’s pathetic, and it’s really disturbing, honestly,” she says, before storming off. As always, Lexi’s not wrong.

Nate finds himself before the permit board, quoting the Bible and begging for reconsideration of his Sunset Settlers plan. He does his best to ask whether they can rebuild around the endangered flowers, but the motion is denied. Nate goes off on the board, asking them if they’re trying to ruin his life; he literally gets on his hands and knees to beg, but they aren’t budging. He breaks down in tears, sobbing on the floor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Back at Alamo’s house, Rue is playing poker with Alamo and the guys while the DEA listens to her tapped phone. She starts nervously questioning Alamo about where they’re going to get drugs now that Laurie isn’t an option, and offers a connect in Mexico. Alamo isn’t buying what she’s selling, and quickly becomes skeptical, telling her “something doesn’t add up,” and asking why she would ask him “something so catastrophically dumb.” Rue is literally and figuratively sweating, as Alamo accuses her of hiding something.

Rue says she’s got a good poker hand, but Alamo accuses her of having a look in her eye “like a motherfucking rat.” Luckily, though, he just thinks she’s using again. Relieved, Rue goes all in on her hand and celebrates her win, with Alamo warning her to stay away from hard drugs.

Back at the club, Rue removes Angel’s name from her locker. Sadly, it doesn’t look like she’s coming back from that scary rehab place. Magick (Rosalía, with a bigger role this episode) says Angel “disappeared” and “ran away from rehab.” But, she says, “life goes on.” Kitty takes her locker instead and dances for the crowd while Rue watches, unsettled. “It’s almost like Angel knew she was never coming back,” Rue narrates. “And just like Tish, everyone would soon forget.”

Dressed in a backless catsuit with matching gloves, Cassie hops in an Uber with Maddy, who purrs approvingly, “You look good, bitch.” Maddy is taking Cassie to the house of someone named Brandon Fontaine (Jeff Wahlberg). She tells Cassie that he has 20 million followers, and their goal is to get him to post a video of Cassie looking hot. They make their way through the crowd in a scene reminiscent of early Euphoria high school parties.

Maddy gives Cassie her best pep talk about dealing with Brandon and his scene: “All he cares about is pussy. You’re gonna tempt him with pussy, you’re not gonna give him pussy. The moment you do, he’ll never speak to you again.” She directs her further: “Don’t trust these girls. These bitches are dogs. Stray dogs.” Cassie is the “cute new bitch” on the block. “Stay sharp, stay focused, and let’s fucking win.” Cassie says it feels like they’re going to war, and Maddy smiles deviously.

Cassie does her best work, getting up on a table and dancing and making out with another girl to draw attention to herself. It works, and she jumps up and down as he puts her on film. There’s a stark juxtaposition with a scene back at the club, where a group of youngish dudes in polos and backward caps have taken Kitty into a private room to have rough sex with her while they high-five and slap each other’s asses. Rue watches on the surveillance camera, again rattled.

It turns out the girl Cassie made out with is Katelyn, the TikToker that Maddy turned into a porn star earlier in the season before being forced to drop her. Cassie goes off with Brandon and Katelyn to do drugs (“I love coke,” Cassie says brightly). They go up to Brandon’s room, and as Katelyn has Brandon sniff coke out of her belly button, Maddy bangs on the door in a callback to the infamous bathroom episode from season two. Cassie jumps in and does the drugs first, and they hit her a little too hard as she screams and gets Brandon to do a line off her crotch. Ever the hustler, Maddy returns to the locked door with a crew of guys with cameras in tow. Just as Brandon takes his shirt off and straddles Cassie, Maddy bursts into the room with the cameras, and Cassie blows a kiss to the camera, saying, “It’s me, Cassie, and that’s my handle.” As Cassie’s phone blows up with followers, Maddy tells her, “You got their attention, now you gotta keep it.”

Rue finds Kitty in the bathroom, swilling mouthwash and asking for ketamine. Rue asks her if she wants to be doing this, and if she’s being forced. But Kitty just says, “I like to dance.” Magick comes whistling out of a stall, having heard everything, and it’s hard to know if she’s friend or foe. She immediately tells Big Eddy what she heard Rue asking Kitty. “I don’t trust this bitch,” she tells him.

Rue enters the office where Big Eddy is sitting with Magick, and her “Mom,” or the DEA, starts calling her phone. She picks up, and they tell her what just happened, that she’s been compromised. As she does her best to discredit Magick, a group of masked, armed men break into the club—Laurie’s crew, presumably. They put a gun to Rue and Magick’s heads, telling Big Eddy to open the safe. He doesn’t and is totally willing to let them die. But instead, the gunman shoots him in the stomach. As he bleeds out painfully, with his blood spattered over Rue’s face, they threaten him again: “It’s either your balls, or the motherfucking safe.” Big Eddy gives up the safe, opening it for them. They take what’s inside and run, giggling, to their getaway truck.

Rue calls Bishop, who tells her that rather than take Big Eddy to the hospital, they need to check the cameras for footage. Magick says the driver is a woman with “gigantic lips”—who could it be, but Faye? Rue immediately gives her up as Laurie’s worker, and the war is officially on.

When Odessa A’zion showed up to her first Met Gala on Monday night, she was wearing a custom Valentino look she’d helped design herself. She and Alessandro Michele had traded sketches, notes, and references back and forth, riffing on the night’s dress code, “Fashion is Art,” until they got the daring outfit exactly right.

The final look was a nod to pre-war Hollywood: a black silk peplum corset with sparkling pink-and-blue floral embroidery, matching cut-out lily flowers covering A’zion’s chest, a black silk scarf worn like a choker, black tights and leather thigh-high boots, and a long black and slate blue embroidered cape worn off the shoulder, trailing dramatically on the floor.

“I loved the idea of lily flowers, embroidery, a fabric that would reflect, and a big old scarf and a long wide cape,” A’zion told W . “We had a lot of 1925-1940 cabaret wardrobes and film costumes, especially embroidered body pieces, on our moodboard. What they made back then was so elaborate and detailed. We loved and pulled from that quite a bit.”

A’zion typically does her own hair and makeup, and this night was no different, with a few extensions added to her signature bouncy black curls. She completed the look with well-placed sparkly freckle-jewels on her face and Pandora jewelry, including flower- and heart-detail rings. Of the night’s theme, she added with characteristic flair: “Fashion is always art, baby, no matter what it is!”

Though it was A'zion's initiation into fashion's biggest night—one co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, and which raised a record-breaking $42 million for the Museum's Costume Institute—the 25-year-old is no stranger to a high-stakes red carpet. After her breakout last year as Timothée Chalamet’s love interest in Josh Safdie’s nine-time Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme, followed by her instantly cult-favorite role as Rachel Sennott’s influencer best friend on HBO’s I Love LA, A’zion has established herself as one of Hollywood’s most compelling new faces. The Met Gala was just a chance to show off her sartorial range—and to connect with some of her favorite fellow artists.

She was one of eleven attendees dressed by Valentino for the evening, a star-studded group that included Joe Alwyn, Colman Domingo, Sombr, and Tyla—who happens to have worn one of A’zion’s favorite Met Gala looks of all time. Also on A’zion’s personal Met Gala Mount Rushmore: “Rihanna! Madonna! Zendaya! Kim Kardashian! Cher!”

In the end, the best part of A'zion's look was the creative work that went into it. “[It was] really incredible to be able to collaborate on such a piece of art,” she added. “It meant so much to me. I felt so taken care of by Alessandro and the whole team. It was handled with such care and artistry. What a cool experience.”

The Met Gala is a particularly heart-thumping occasion, especially for first-time attendees. The best advice she got from those who’ve done it before, “‘Breathe on the carpet. It’s scary, but it’s fast.’ I think I forgot to,” she says. In past interviews A’zion has joked that she basically blacks out ahead of facing the photographer onslaught, a feeling she reiterated to W. “I don't think I have a free second to calm my nerves until I'm on the other side of the carpet, and it's over,” she said of her getting ready process. “Sometimes I'll turn off music for a little bit beforehand, so my brain doesn't explode."

A’zion was most excited for what happened at the top of the steps. “Honestly, I was most looking forward to seeing what designers had created this year,” she said. “And, seeing what happened on the other side of it all, because I had zero clue what went down in there.”

When she’s in the right headspace, though, her pre-carpet ritual involves putting on the soothing music of her favorite artists. “When I’m listening again, it’s Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, just good music. Whatever feels good.” It’s a fitting move for A’zion, who, in addition to preparing for acting projects like Oscar-winning director Justine Triet’s first English-language feature, Fonda, is also finally embracing her lifelong love of singing. Just a few days before the Met Gala, A’zion officially released her first two songs under her name, “Liquor Store Roses” and “Maybe I’m Not What You Need.” The spare, confessional ballads show off A’zion’s smoky, unguarded vocals.

As for what's next musically? "I guess we'll just have to wait and see!"

Charli xcx has never shied away from pushing the boundaries. Two summers ago, with Brat, she took us to the club, then the afters, then another club, then—well, you get it. As she played the life of the party at the center of the world’s dance floor, the pop star translated that innovative ethos to her self-presentation, which, like her art, was raw, edgy, and never without a bit of wit.

All along, YSL Beauty has been working with Charli to make some of her biggest beauty moments come to life (the singer is also a longtime muse and friend of Saint Laurent Creative Director Anthony Vaccarello). She used products from the house’s makeup line for the festival premiere of The Moment (the hypermeta mockumentary about the rise and fictional fall of the Brat era), her custom, elegant Saint Laurent look at this year’s Met Gala, and most recently, for her lane-swerving “Rock Music” video, in which she’s equal parts stripped back with a totally bare face and highly glam with a glittering, smoky cat eye—the two sides of the Charli xcx coin.

It’s a natural step in the creative partnership, then, for the announcement that Charli xcx is YSL Beauty’s newest US Local Ambassador. She’s in good company, joining Amelia Gray, Lila Moss, and Laura Harrier in officially partnering with the brand. YSL Beauty has just launched its new Skin Affair Soft Glow Cushion Foundation, a lightweight, medium-coverage liquid foundation arriving in clutch packaging, and to celebrate, Charli xcx fronts a campaign shot by director Renell Medrano. The video follows Charli through four stages of “artistic becoming,” exploring the tension between the private self and the public performance that the three-time Grammy winner and increasingly in-demand screen actor knows so intimately.

Charli chatted with W ahead of the campaign’s launch to share some of her favorite beauty tips, tricks, and regrets (or lack thereof):

What’s one YSL Beauty product you’d recommend for a night out with your friends?

I love the lip blushers. They’re so easy to use, and you can really kind of smudge them into your lips. I like that they're matte, and it just feels pretty effortless when you wear them. If you’re on a night out, I feel like you can really just throw it on even without looking in a mirror, which is kind of how I like to do it, like—in the car to the party. It’s very on the go.

YSL Lovenude Lip Blusher

Are there any beauty icons you admire at the moment?

I love Monica Vitti. And I love Monica Bellucci. All the Monicas. [laughs] Plus Béatrice Dalle, she's so punk and cool.

Are there any makeup or beauty moments you regret from when you were younger?

No, I'll just go with no regrets, you know? I think it's fun to experiment with makeup when you're younger and not take it too seriously, and just have fun being young. You only get to be a kid once. It doesn't need to be serious.

Do you have any makeup non-negotiables for when you’re on stage?

I guess I don't. I'm never one for too much on stage, just because I'm always moving so much. I don't really like to wear powder on stage. I like it just to all feel very natural—like no lashes, nothing like that. Less is more.

Is there a beauty trick that you've learned that you wish you had known sooner?

Sometimes I'll hairspray my brows, which I think is a really good one. It's probably not very good for you, but they really stay. And I guess I still don't know how to curl my eyelashes with an eyelash curler, so hopefully one day I'll learn how to do that.

The first Monday in May has arrived, which in the fashion world means one thing: the stars have descended upon Manhattan for the Met’s annual gala benefiting the Costume Institute. This year's edition, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour—with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos as honorary chairs—celebrates the opening of "Costume Art," an exhibition pairing garments and artworks from across the Met's vast collection to make the case for fashion as an embodied art form. The dress code, "Fashion Is Art," plays on the same theme.

The gala surpassed last year's $31 million in funds raised with a record-breaking $42 million, an especially vital sum given that the Costume Institute is largely self-funded. That’s part of what makes the night so important for supporting the arts, and while the parade of celebrities, designers, and artists posing in meticulously crafted looks is the night's biggest draw, the spontaneous moments once guests clear the museum steps are the most coveted. That's in part because phones and photography inside the gala have been banned—per Wintour—since 2015, though a few candid photos typically manage to make it out (you might recall 2017’s infamous bathroom-smoking photos). Below, the behind-the-scenes celeb run-ins and moments from the 2026 Met Gala you might've missed.

Sunday Rose Kidman Urban and Nicole Kidman

Anok Yai and Pierpaolo Piccioli

Jennie, Hoyeon, and Chase Infiniti

Jennie, Hoyeon, and Chase Infiniti

Coco Jones and Doechii

Beyoncé

Beyoncé and Blue Ivy Carter

Blue Ivy and Beyoncé inside the Met

Rihanna, Ciara and Katy Perry

Rihanna, Heidi Klum, and A$AP Rocky

Co-chairs Venus Williams, Nicole Kidman and Beyoncé

Beyoncé in her second look of the night

Sabrina Carpenter and Stevie Nicks performing

Charli xcx and Sabrina Carpenter

Teyana Taylor and Connor Storrie

Rosé and Lisa

Rosé and Gigi Hadid

Laufey and Sombr

Odessa A'zion and Chase Infiniti

Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian

Akeem Morris and Madonna

Madonna and Akeem Morris

Cher

Tessa Thompson and Ayo Edebiri

Ayo Edebiri and Zoë Kravitz

Zoë Kravitz, Lily-Rose Depp, and Gracie Abrams

Jennie, Zoë Kravitz, Lily-Rose Depp, and Gracie Abrams

Ayo Edebiri and Lily-Rose Depp

Tate McRae, Rosé, and Connor Storrie dancing the night away

Sabrina Carpenter, Zoë Kravitz, and Hailey Bieber

Jisoo, Rosé, Lisa, and Jennie

Lisa and Hudson Williams

Connor Storrie, Charli xcx, and Tate McRae

Sabrina Carpenter admiring the Met’s art collection

Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner

Hailey Bieber, Kylie Jenner, and Zoë Kravitz

SZA, Doechii, and Hailey Bieber

Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner, and Russell Westbrook

Chase Sui Wonders, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Hailey Bieber

Olivia Wilde and Katy Perry

Hailey Bieber, Hunter Schafer, Lux Pascal, Paloma Elsesser, Alex Consani, and Kylie Jenner

Alexis Roche, Kylie Jenner, and John Galliano

Colman Domingo and Janelle Monáe

Felicity Blunt, Heidi Klum, Colman Domingo, Emily Blunt, Carey Mulligan, and Nicholas Hoult

Jordan Roth, Paul Anthony Kelly, and Olivia Wilde

Olivia Wilde and Patrick Schwarzenegger

Mark Zuckerberg, Alysa Liu, and Priscilla Chan

Chase Infiniti and Hoyeon

Greta Gerwig, Stella McCartney, and Tate McRae

Margot Robbie and Lily-Rose Depp

Huma Abedin and Ben Stiller

Julianne Moore and Lux Pascal

Ben Stiller and Heidi Klum

Since 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has been one of cinema's most coveted showcases, drawing filmmakers to the Croisette each May to vie for the industry's highest awards. In recent years, its status has only grown, fueled by a string of high-profile selections that have won over critics, audiences, and awards bodies.

Past editions have launched The Substance, Emilia Pérez, and Anora into the awards conversation, while last year's slate paired critical darlings like Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value and Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident with blockbuster fare like Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning.

This year, the lineup leans arthouse and international, with familiar auteurs like Justine Triet, Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Schoenbrun, Ron Howard, and Steven Soderbergh all in competition. There are a few boldface names, too: Kristen Stewart returns after premiering her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, here last year. This time, she’s starring opposite Woody Harrelson in French director Quentin Dupieux’s absurdist comedy Full Phil. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver will reunite for Paper Tiger, and Sentimental Value star Renate Reinsve joins Sebastian Stan in Norway-set drama Fjord.

Park Chan-wook takes over as jury president from 2025's Juliette Binoche, making him the first Korean to hold the role in the festival's history.

Television fans will have extra reason to pay attention, too: the cast of HBO's highly anticipated fourth season of The White Lotus, set in part at the festival itself, will be on the ground, with some filming taking place during the real event.

Ahead of the 79th edition, which runs May 12 to 23 and will honor Barbra Streisand and Peter Jackson with lifetime achievement Palmes d'Or, here are 14 releases not to miss:

Bitter Christmas (Pedro Almodóvar)

After making his English-language feature debut in 2024 with the Golden Lion-winning The Room Next Door, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pedro Almodóvar returns to his native Spanish with Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad). The premise—a successful advertising director (Bárbara Lennie) traveling from Madrid to the island of Lanzarote to grieve her mother's death, while a filmmaker named Raúl mines her story for inspiration—hints at autobiographical territory. Expect another dip into the auteur's color-drenched world.

Avedon (Ron Howard)

Ron Howard turns his lens on Richard Avedon in a new documentary tracing the photographer's groundbreaking career through never-before-seen archives, footage, and interviews with his close collaborators and confidants. Avedon's influence on fashion, photography, and the 20th-century American aesthetic is hard to overstate, and Howard—whose recent docs have tackled The Beatles, Jim Henson, and Luciano Pavarotti—is an ideal director to take on the scale of his prolific legacy.

The Man I Love (Ira Sachs)

Ira Sachs has been on a roll, with Passages (2023) and Peter Hujar's Day (2025) confirming his standing as one of queer cinema's most distinctive voices. He'll present The Man I Love, a drama about an artist in late-'80s downtown New York (Rami Malek) preparing for the biggest work of his career after a terminal AIDS diagnosis. The cast also includes Rebecca Hall, Tom Sturridge, The Bear's Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and The Crown's Luther Ford.

Fatherland (Pawel Pawlikowski)

The biggest draw of Fatherland is its star: German actress Sandra Hüller, who had a breakout 2023 with Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. This year hasn't been quiet for Hüller either: she stars in the blockbuster Project Hail Mary and won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at Berlin for Rose. In Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's latest, shot in his signature black-and-white, she plays Erika Mann, daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning anti-Nazi writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler), as the two return to their native Germany at the height of the Cold War.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun)

The first night of Un Certain Regard opens with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the follow-up to cult filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun's 2024 film I Saw The TV Glow . Like its predecessor, the new film traffics in horror, fantasy, and ’90s nostalgia. Hacks star Hannah Einbinder plays a director tasked with rebooting the fictional Camp Miasma slasher franchise, but when she becomes obsessed with the original final girl (Gillian Anderson), things turn bloody. Sorry, Baby breakout Eva Victor also stars.

John Lennon: The Last Interview (Steven Soderbergh)

Steven Soderbergh's John Lennon: The Last Interview is built around the never-before-released-in-full conversation Lennon and Yoko Ono gave to an RKO Radio team at home on December 8, 1980, a wide-ranging discussion of their album Double Fantasy, partnership, parenthood, and hopes for the future, recorded hours before Lennon was shot and killed that night. Soderbergh pared the nearly three-hour interview down, paired it with archival footage, and, for roughly 10% of the film's runtime, AI imagery—a choice that's sure to spark a conversation of its own.

Paper Tiger (James Gray)

A late addition to the lineup, James Gray's Paper Tiger (the director's follow-up to films like Armageddon Time and Ad Astra) brings extra star power to the festival. Miles Teller and Adam Driver play brothers in 1980s New York whose attempts to make their fortunes pull them into the orbit of the Russian mob. Scarlett Johansson plays Teller's wife.

Club Kid (Jordan Firstman)

Comedian Jordan Firstman makes his directorial debut with Club Kid, in which he writes, directs, and stars as a New York club promoter who discovers he's the father of a 10-year-old son. Until now, Firstman has been best known for his viral social media impressions and a starring role on Rachel Sennott's HBO comedy I Love LA. He's joined by Diego Calva (On Swift Horses) and Cara Delevingne in her first major role in years.

Hope (Na Hong-Jin)

Na Hong-jin returns with his first feature in a decade, Hope, a 2-hour-40-minute sci-fi thriller competing for the Palme d'Or. The story centers on a village near the North Korean border in the aftermath of a tiger sighting, with Squid Game breakout Hoyeon Jung, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, and Taylor Russell rounding out a striking international ensemble. Michael Abels (Get Out, Us, Nope) provides the score.

Her Private Hell (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Nicolas Winding Refn, who won Best Director at Cannes in 2011 with the Ryan Gosling-starring Drive, returns with Her Private Hell, his first feature in a decade. The film weaves multiple storylines through a future metropolis where actresses gather at a glamorous hotel to shoot a Barbarella-style production, while a killer known as Leather Man stalks women across the city. The Danish auteur has assembled a who’s-who cast of in-demand young actors to tell the story: Charles Melton, Sophie Thatcher, Kristine Froseth, and Havana Rose Liu.

Full Phil (Quentin Dupieux)

Quentin Dupieux described Full Phil to Variety as "Emily in Paris in hell—a fever dream, a nightmare version of it." Woody Harrelson plays a widowed American industrialist on a lavish Paris trip with his daughter (Kristen Stewart), with whom he's trying to reconnect, until things slip, in characteristic Dupieux fashion, into something strange involving French cuisine, an invasive hotel employee, and a 1950s horror film within the film. The cast also includes Charlotte Le Bon, Emma Mackey, Nassim Lyes, and Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

Fjord (Cristian Mungiu)

Fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value, Renate Reinsve returns to Cannes as the star of Fjord, the English-language debut of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who won the 2007 Palme d'Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Reinsve plays a Norwegian mother who returns with her Romanian husband (Sebastian Stan) and their children to her remote birthplace village. After bonding with the family next door, the family becomes the target of suspicion when they're accused of disturbing behavior.

Diamond (Andy Garcia)

Andy Garcia (Ocean's Eleven, Father of the Bride) wrote, directed, and stars in Diamond, his Out of Competition Cannes world premiere, and a passion project nearly 15 years in the making. Garcia plays Joe Diamond, a present-day investigator with the bearing of a classic noir detective, who works the cases that LA's police can't crack. The heavyweight ensemble includes Vicky Krieps, Brendan Fraser, Rosemarie DeWitt, Demián Bichir, Danny Huston, and Yul Vazquez, with Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman reuniting with Garcia after 2005's The Lost City.

The Unknown (Arthur Harari)

The Unknown is the third film from Arthur Harari, who shared the 2024 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Anatomy of a Fall with partner Justine Triet. This time, he co-wrote with his brother Lucas Harari, adapting Lucas's graphic novel Le cas David Zimmerman, a literary, Kafka-influenced spin on the body-swap genre. Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider star in the story about a photographer who has a one-night stand with a stranger and somehow wakes up in her body.

The best summer books of 2026 span the full range of what the season demands, from buzzy debuts and long-awaited sequels to prestige literary fiction and compulsive pop-culture deep dives. Anne Hathaway is already attached to adapt one, and another will serve as the basis for the third season of a beloved HBO series. Lena Dunham finally reckons with her Girls era, Liane Moriarty returns with Big Little Truths, and Colson Whitehead closes out his lauded Harlem trilogy. Elsewhere, Eve Babitz’s letters surface at last, the Kardashians get their own media manifesto, and PEN15’s Anna Konkle brings humor to family history.

Read on for W’s best and most-anticipated books of the summer 2026 season (so far):

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (April 7)

'Yesteryear' by Caro Claire Burke

Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel couldn’t have had a better reception. The buzzy satire is a number-one bestseller and already has a big-screen adaptation in the works, with Anne Hathaway set to star and produce. Yesteryear is about Natalie, a tradwife influencer with eight million followers, who wakes up one day in 1855 and is forced to face the reality of the fantasy she’s been selling.

Famesick by Lena Dunham (April 14, Random House)

'Famesick' by Lena Dunham

Come for the Girls gossip, stay for the vulnerable, clear-eyed reckoning with the cost of fame. Lena Dunham’s second memoir, published seven years after Girls ended and she became one of the most controversial voices of her generation, covers the years following her instant rise to fame at 23. She goes deep on her chronic illness and her relationships—including with figures like Jack Antonoff, Adam Driver, and Jenni Konner—with the ruthless self-deprecation and wry wit that made her a lightning rod in the first place.

American Spirits by Anna Dorn (April 14, Simon & Schuster)

'American Spirits' by Anna Dorn

Anna Dorn’s follow-up to Perfume and Pain has all the trappings of a great 2026 novel: a niche pop star named Blue Velour, a songwriting retreat in the redwoods, and an obsessive Reddit subreddit dedicated to tracking said pop star’s every move. American Spirits explores the dark side of hard-worn fame through the dangers of parasocial relationships and the violence that can erupt when the distance between fan and star collapses and expectations clash with reality.

The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek by Andrew Durbin (April 14, FSG)

'The Wonderful World That Almost Was' by Andrew Durbin

Frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin wrote the first full dual biography of photographer Peter Hujar and sculptor Paul Thek. The pair—whose downtown New York art world included Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Fran Lebowitz, and David Wojnarowicz—were lovers, rivals, and frequent collaborators, and died within a year of each other in the late 1980s from AIDS-related complications. The book arrives at a moment of great renewed interest in Hujar in particular, including the release of Ira Sachs’s 2025 film, Peter Hujar’s Day, and the publication of a book of previously unseen contact sheets of his work, accompanied by an exhibition at The Morgan Library.

The Sane One by Anna Konkle (May 5, Penguin)

'The Sane One' by Anna Konkle

The co-creator of Hulu’s Pen15—the cult classic series in which she and Maya Erskine played middle-school versions of themselves as thirty-something adults—brings that same humor and uncanny ability to channel her childhood voice to her debut memoir. The coming-of-age story centers the reappearance of Konkle’s estranged father and the way we can never truly escape our past, no matter how much we might try. This one arrives just in time for Mother’s and Father’s Day.

Dekonstructing the Kardashians by MJ Corey (May 5, Pantheon)

'Dekonstructing the Kardashians' by MJ Corey (May 5, Pantheon)

Brooklyn-based psychotherapist and cultural theorist MJ Corey built her viral Kardashian Kolloquium platform by applying media theory and postmodern frameworks to the family that has shaped our image-saturated social media era. This book is the long-form version of that project, using the Kardashians as the organizing principle for how Western media has evolved over the past 50 years. From the old Hollywood studio system to TikTok, media has become increasingly disjointed and self-referential, and Corey charts the rise of the Kardashian reality TV empire to explore exactly how and why that’s happened.

John of John by Douglas Stuart (May 5, Grove)

'John of John' by Douglas Stuart (May 5, Grove)

The Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain returns with his third novel, following a broke art school graduate who returns to his family’s land on the Isle of Harris, caught between his sheep-farmer father and his own secrets. The Scottish writer once again weaves a tale about the unspoken threads that threaten to unravel between generations and the costs of keeping one’s true identity, queer or otherwise, hidden.

On Witness and Respair: Essays by Jesmyn Ward (May 19, Scribner)

'On Witness and Respair: Essays' by Jesmyn Ward

The first woman and first Black writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice—for Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—Jesmyn Ward publishes her first essay collection with On Witness and Respair. The pieces move through grief (especially in light of Ward’s partner dying on the eve of the pandemic), motherhood, and her creative relationship with literary heroes like Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, and Richard Wright.

Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were), edited by Lili Anolik (June 23, NYRB)

'Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were),' edited by Lili Anolik (June 23, NYRB)

For her follow-up to 2024’s Didion & Babitz, which charted the long-term relationship between the two writers and their influence on American culture, Lili Anolik returns to her project of restoring Babitz to her rightful place in the literary canon. This time, it’s with the full archive of Babitz’s correspondence, including her diaristic letters to Annie Leibovitz, Joan Didion, and Steve Martin—some of which were sent, most of which weren’t. Along the way, Anolik adds context with illuminating commentary.

Land by Maggie O’Farrell (June 2, Knopf)

'Land' by Maggie O'Farrell

The author of Hamnet—winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and The National Book Critics Circle Award, and recently Oscar-nominated for her screenplay adaptation alongside director Chloé Zhao—returns with a sweeping historical novel set in post-famine Ireland. Land follows a father and son as they map the ruined country for the British Ordnance Survey in 1865, until a disturbing encounter changes everything.

Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom (June 2, Soho Press)

'Lovers XXX' by Allie Rowbottom

Allie Rowbottom follows up her 2022 debut novel Aesthetica, which took on plastic surgery and female self-erasure with unflinching clarity, with a novel set in the adult filmmaking industry of 1980s Los Angeles. Two teenagers and best friends navigate the alluring glamour and dangerous perils of life on the margins: dancing at a Sunset Strip club, dating older men, going on drug binges, and participating in stickups. Ultimately, Lovers XXX is a love story between the two women, who find themselves and each other on their quest for self-actualization beyond survival.

Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi (June 9, MacMillan)

‘Pool House’ by Mary H.K. Choi

Author, editor, and journalist Mary H.K. Choi is back with a new novel that delves into complicated mother-daughter relationships that are still filled with love. Stevie, a recent college dropout, can’t afford to make her Hollywood dreams come true, so she moves in with her mother, Moon. “Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed,” Choi writes. Still reeling from her lover (and TV husband’s) death, Moon wrestles with her grief. Meanwhile, she’s living in a glass-wall pool house in the backyard with Stevie, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three “are pulled into a messy orbit.” Although this book comes out in June via Flatiron Books, it has already found fans in Roxane Gay (who picked it for her Audacious Book Club reading list) and Michelle Zauner, aka Japanese Breakfast, who described the narrative as “Grey Gardens set against the tarnished glitz of the Hollywood C-list.”

The Kings of Vegas by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman (June 30, William Morrow)

'The Kings of Vegas' by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

The bestselling duo behind Literacy and Longing in L.A. and Freud’s Mistress, Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, return with a propulsive thriller about a woman summoned back to her family’s crumbling casino empire after her father’s sudden death. She soon finds she’s faced with a Succession-style chess match for her inheritance with not only her brothers, but the FBI, the Las Vegas mob, and a rival casino owner.

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (July 21, Doubleday)

'Cool Machine' by Colson Whitehead

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner—for The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys—closes out his Harlem Trilogy with a novel set in 1980s New York, a decade in which rampant economic growth and real estate development collided with the violent undercurrents running the city. Whitehead’s main character, Ray Carney, a furniture dealer turned master fencer, navigates both as he takes on one last big job and tries to rescue his cousin’s son from the city’s worst forces.

Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli (July 28, Knopf)

'Beginning Middle End' by Valeria Luiselli

The Mexican author of modern classics including Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends publishes her latest novel with Beginning Middle End. Set during a trip to Sicily, the book follows a mother and teenage daughter as they try to reconstruct their lives after the collapse of a marriage. The road novel weaves together four generations of women through archaeology, mythology, and the natural world, using Luiselli’s characteristic “documentary fiction” style of storytelling—for which she was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.

Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty (August 25, Crown)

'Big Little Truths' by Liane Moriarty

Over a decade after publishing Big Little Lies—the novel that would go on to become the megahit HBO series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, and Zoë Kravitz—Liane Moriarty is returning with the long-awaited sequel she once said she had no interest in writing. The book picks up ten years after the events of the first book, with Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie’s children now in high school and a new crisis descending upon the group. (The book will also serve as the basis for season three of the HBO series, with the original cast expected to return.)