The Way They Were

Kelly Clarkson, a $15,000 mechanical bird and a Brooklyn hipster art shop owner: the celebrity feud we never knew we needed. This week, Gráinne and Chantal ask whether Kelly’s having her Pretty Woman moment or if this is her Ellen moment. Plus, Patreon subscribers get the latest from Halle Berry's parenting woes and we take a closer look at Selma Blair’s mile-high breakdown. Buckle up. To get epis...

This week, Gráinne and Chantal pick through the VMAs fallout, Richard E. Grant’s gloriously crap debut on The Traitors and Nigella’s glorious arrival in the Bake Off tent. Plus, Taylor Swift continues to fight misogyny with mediocrity, and Meghan touches down in the UK. Plus a special preview of our next episode with a very special returning guest. Thanks for all your parience as we try to figure...

A quick apology for the slightly chaotic schedule lately: babies and general life admin have been against us, but we’ll be back to our usual rhythm very soon. Thank you for bearing with us! This week, Gráinne and Chantal are finally reunited and naturally have several weeks’ worth of opinions to unload. Gráinne reports from the glamorous front line of new motherhood, Chantal considers a career cha...

Breaking news! Just when we thought Harry and Meghan had settled into their Californian era, the ex royals are heading back to Britain. Even though the baby is sound asleep next door, Grainne and Chantal have called an emergency  The Way They Were  summit to discuss what this means for the royal family and whether reconciliation is finally on the cards. Plus, over on Patreon: D...

From society weddings to headline making break-ups, Earl Charles Spencer's love life has generated almost as many column inches as the royal family itself. This week, Chantal and Gráinne are joined by the hilarious Davina Bentley to untangle the many relationships of Princess Diana's younger brother, from his marriages to his recent split from Countess Karen Gordon. From grand estates to front-pag...

Emergency episode! The  Real Housewives of Salt Lake City  relationship apocalypse is upon us, with Angie K and Shawn, Bronwyn and Todd, and Whitney “Wild” Rose and Justin all calling it quits. With Chantal off at a hippy festival in Sweden, Gráinne has roped in Housewives aficionado Michelle Shaughnessy to unpack the rumours, nastiness and accusations surrounding these separations. See...

What's the T? The Girls are figthing! There was a time when Nicki Minaj and Cardi B looked like they could rule rap together. Instead, they gave us one of the defining celebrity feuds of the 2010s: diss tracks, subtweets, fan wars and, eventually, a flying shoe. This week, Chantal and Gráinne trace how admiration curdled into all-out warfare, ask whether there was ever room for two queens, and won...

This week, she's gone too far this time. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's nuptials allegedly involved secret locations, cryptic travel instructions, QR codes, phone bans and enough security to make a G7 summit look chill. Is this the height of modern romance, or have celebrity weddings become a little... gauche? Plus, don't miss a very special announcement... there's a new baby joining  The Wa...

You can't mistake their biology! This week on  The Way They Were , Chantal and Gráinne are joined by Ben Anderson and Frazer York from  Ur Welcome America  to unpack the on-again, off-again romance between Girls Aloud icon Nadine Coyle and  Desperate Housewives  HUNK Jesse Metcalfe. Expect noughties nostalgia, Hollywood gossip, plenty of false starts, and a relationship th...

Before reality TV power couples and Instagram fitness influencers, there was  Chyna  &  Triple H . She was the trailblazing superstar smashing wrestling's glass ceiling. He was the ambitious future champion climbing to the top of WWE. Together they helped define wrestling in the 90s until their love affair became suprise triple threat. Gráinne  and  Chantal  are j...

Emergency episode!  Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater have split, and Gráinne and Chantal are diving headfirst into the Wickedly juicy chaos. Is Ariana trapped in a cycle of whirlwind romances and reinventions? How did Ethan Slater go from respected theatre actor to the internet’s most unwilling main character? And can Arianna ever recover from the reputation her most recent relationship has sad...

In 2015, Bad Blood turned a rumoured fallout between two pop princesses into the biggest cold war of the 2010s, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry became locked in a feud fuelled by stolen dancers, subtweets, stan armies and forensic lyric analysis. This week on  The Way They Were , Gráinne and Chantal revisit the glittery, petty, weirdly addictive feud that defined pop’s Tu...

This week, Gráinne Maguire returns from SNL UK as we slip into the fallout between Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall. On Sex and the City, Carrie and Samantha felt unbreakable. Off-screen? Pay disputes, mean girl accusations and contract disputes. We look at one of the most high profile hollywood feuds in a special platonic edition of The Way They Were! To get epi...

Gráinne is back for a very special edition of  The Way They Are  book club, diving into  Famesick  by Lena Dunham. A memoir that reads less like a victory lap and more like a slow, uneasy unravelling, it takes in blind-item anecdotes, her breakup with Jack Antonoff, and behind-the-scenes drama with her on-screen love interest Adam Driver. Chantal and Gráinne dig...

On this special episode, Chantal and guest Michelle Shaughnessy  zoom in on the glossy excess of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and size up the franchise’s newest arrival, The Real Housewives of Rhode Island! Plus over on the Patreon we get into the Summer House drama, Jen Shah's post prison interview and Carole Radziwill's problematic relationship with Ghislaine Max...

Barry Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter looked like one of those modern celebrity pairings that somehow made sense: the brooding Irish actor and the pop star with the sharpest tongue on the charts. Two pint-sized superstars with the world at their feet, until it was all over. This week on The Way They Were , we pick apart the short-and-sweet romance between the Saltburn star and the Espresso chanteuse...

Love might not cost a thing, but this one came with a lot of receipts. When Jennifer Lopez (back once again!) fell for Sean Combs in 1999, it felt like pop had engineered its own super-couple. She was shimmering on the brink of full-blown world domination; he was the Svengali of west coast rap. Tracksuits, champagne, Versace dresses and so much white clothing. Then came the nightclub shooting, the...

The original short king meets the ultimate revolutionary party girl and sparks one of history’s most chaotic love stories. Napoleon, the obsessive letter-writer who conquered Europe but couldn’t quite conquer matters of the heart falls hard for Josephine: glamorous, widowed, and a real good time girl. Comedian and actress Rosalie Minnitt joins Gráinne and Chantal to unpack the passion, politics an...

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were never just a couple they were a full-blown cultural event. From Paris Fashion Week to reality TV, Instagram meltdowns and frequent attempts to break the internet, their relationship blurred the line between love story, brand strategy and performance art. But how did two people from such different worlds become the defining celebrity power couple of the 2010s? Thi...

The Beckham family feud feels less like a falling out and more like a prestige drama about what happens when you are born into a brand. This week on  The Way They Were: Gossip Edition , Gráinne and Chantal dive into the Beckham family saga, from wedding dress dramas and strategic Instagram silences to the (girl) power of Victoria’s Spice Girls nostalgia and David’s all round awfulness, asking...

Tiger Woods sold perfection: serene, disciplined, surgically controlled. Golf’s ultimate good boy, engineered from childhood to never miss a shot. Off the course? A very different game was being played. On  The Way They Were , we revisit the scandal that destroyed Tiger Woods' spotless image. Drugs, over 100 different women and the fateful night when Elin Nordegren smashed up his SUV with a g...

It’s the first episode of the year and  The Way They Were  is back with a  special GOSSIP edition . Gráinne Maguire and Chantal Feduchin-Pate get stuck into the delicious weirdness of celebrity mum friendships, as we look at the fallout of Ashley Tisdale’s toxic mom group revelations. Then, Chantal's faithful status is under fire as she reveals she doesn't 'get' the national treasur...

This week on  The Way They Were , we’re unlocking one of our  most popular Patreon episodes of the year  and sharing it on the free feed. We’re doing something a little different today. Chantal swaps her mic for a magnifying glass and Gráinne pulls her fedora low as they step away from the usual romantic nostalgia and into the glittering golden age of Hollywood. This time, our sleut...

This week on The Way They Were , Gráinne and Chantal hang the tinsel, spike the mulled wine, and take a sleigh ride through Christmas past, present and future via Crimbo movies. From Judy Garland’s golden-age yearning, through Jimmy Stewart’s moral reckonings, to Cate Blanchett’s ice-cool elegance and Alicia Silverstone teaching us that even Netflix makes mistakes . Along the way, Chantal reveals...

This week on  The Way They Were , we do the unthinkable: we go back to  Love Actually . Gráinne and Chantal rank the couples from least offensive to “maybe we should call the police”, asking the big questions Richard Curtis never did. Who do we hate the most? Are half these characters quietly unhinged? What exactly is going on with Keira Knightley’s extremely youthful bride? And is the s...