Immediately after the photos of Dominic West and Lily James’ Roman bangathon came out last week, it became increasingly clear that West was going to leave Lily out there on her own to take the blame for the affair. Because it’s always the “other woman,” right? It’s always the wanton woman who destroyed a perfectly happy marriage, of course. Dominic retreated to his happy-family life (even if his wife escaped to Ireland) and Lily returned to London, where she has been largely hiding out. Now a “source” tells Us Weekly how Lily actually feels about this mess:
The kisses seen around the world. Lily James wasn’t happy when photos of her and Dominic West cuddling up together made headlines earlier this month, an insider reveals exclusively in the new issue of Us Weekly.
“Dominic and his wife wanted to put up a united front,” the source says, but the 31-year-old actress and West’s wife, Catherine FitzGerald, “were both horrified by the pictures.”
The source adds, “It has strained Lily and Dominic’s working and personal relationship too.”
I… don’t understand? Why was Lily “horrified” by photos which she was part of? Like, no one forced her to get with a married man. Are they trying to say that she’s horrified by her own actions? Horrified that her affair with Dominic became public? I have a theory that Lily doesn’t even like or love Dominic West and she was just banging him out of convenience, for fun. Now that it’s blown up, she can’t believe that she’s getting this much sh-t over someone she doesn’t even like.
As it turns out, Lily couldn’t get away with cancelling all of her (virtual) appearances to promote Netflix’s Rebecca. She managed to do *one* interview… on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon obviously did not ask her about the affair. The start of this video is really funny though, with Jimmy saying that there were “a couple of cool things you did during quarantine…” Yeah, she banged a married man! And she also taught a Broadway Zoom class.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN, Backgrid.
More like horrified that she got caught. Play with fire, you’re going to get burned.
100%
It is also possible that he’s a convincing liar. He cheats on and lies to his wife. Is it so hard to believe that he would cheat on and lies to his side piece? It is perfect possible that he told her that the marriage was over and that they were handling things privately. I’m not saying this is the case. I’m just saying it is possible.
Even of so, getting on with a father of 4 kids who is still not divorced should ring a bell. And the classic “I will leave my wife” is basically something that women who are willing to be the other women get seduced by, thinking that they are somehow special because a man is ready to give up his wife for her. It also is high of “the source” to put her and his wife in the same “horrified by the affair pictures” category. The is no need for this horror when you choose to build something up (like self esteem, or just have fun) at the expense of another woman’s dignity.
I can almost guarantee there was no discussion between James and West about him leaving his wife. She doesn’t want him full-time; he doesn’t want to leave his marriage. I don’t think all mistresses are trying to blow up someone’s family life. There was an opportunity and she took it. It probably isn’t’ much more than that.
Horrified by the pictures or horrified that she got caught red-handed? I feel badly for DW’s wife and no one else in this situation. LJ and DW are both adults (and celebs) and had to be aware of the dangers of their public canoodling or, as Kaiser so aptly called it, “their Roman bangathon.” I have never found either of them particularly likable, LJ less so than him tbh, but I find them both most unsavory at this stage.
I watched Rebecca last night, it was okay, the visuals were gorgeous but the two main characters’ acting was… lacking?
I love the 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Yes, it’s your typical over-acting of that time period, but there’s just something so dark and beautiful about it. The actress who played Rebecca’s maid was so wonderfully creepy.
I liked the new version of “Rebecca,” though the end kind of dragged. Thought the acting was fine, too. Lily was good as was Armie, and let’s not forget Ann Dowd and Kristen Scott-Thomas are in it too! The visuals are gorgeous and you get more of a courtship, see why they fell in love vs. the earlier version, which I loathe except for Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers. Mainly because the 1930s/1940s overacting! They had to work hard to tone down Olivier’s theater mannerisims (I think this was only his third film, second as a leading man), and I never got why his character fell in love with Joan Fontaine’s character. (Though I have seen men, after marrying and divorcing gorgeous/charismatic women, then go for the opposite. Happening with a friend right now. But he seems much happier, so it’s good.) Fontaine played her so weak — and honestly her acting in it was the worst.
On another note: Lily is horrified because she got busted. I go back and forth on the she had been having an affair, the Chris Evans fling was to make Dominic jealous, and that somehow the paparazzi (with her plotting with the manager) knew to take a photo of her and Dominic together to force the issue with his wife. (Shades of Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty, which backfired on Miller.)
Or as Kaiser said, she doesn’t really like him that much and it was a convenient bangathon.
I really liked the 1997 British-German-PBS two-part television miniseries of Rebecca staring Charles Dance & Emilia Fox. I think it is available on Amazon Prime and know it is available on PBS Passport.
FYI: Emilia Fox is the sister of Laurence Fox.
***FYI: Emilia Fox is a cousin of Laurence Fox not his sister.****
Sorry for the mistake.
Yes!!! My undying love for the original ‘Rebecca’ adaptation is why I won’t watch the new one. I’ve got the only version I want, so I’m satisfied, haha. I’m hoping this new film will inspire people to read more Daphne DuMaurier, because she’s written so many wonderful books.
@Jamie: No matter what cinematic version, agree that it will hopefully get people to read her books. And in fact, I will be heading to the library to start perusing which one I want to start with.
@BayTampaBay: I will check out the Dance/Fox version! Thanks for the recommendation.
The thing is in the book there really wasn’t a whole lot of “courting.” The damaged, older Maxim found the unfashionable, sophisticated girl refreshing, and she wanted to be rescued from her miserable life. She later says “I’ll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don’t ever want more than that.” There was no sex, no lust. That was what he had with Rebecca. At the end of the book, after the new Mrs De Winter finds out about Rebecca, she says “Then Maxim took me in his arms and began to kiss me. I shut my eyes. He had never kissed me like this before.”
I haven’t seen the Netflix movie yet, but the trailer makes it look like two youngish people pretty close in age having a passionate affair.
The DM instagram was saying the set vibe was really difficult between those two to the point where people thought something was up (some stories are they had an affair, others were he was pursuing her and she was resisting)
I am so prejudiced towards Armie Hammer that each time I begin a film with him I think he will be rather caca, yet he has always been a pleasant surprise. He is obviously self-conscious about his British accent, and tries to mumble his way through it, but he plays the role very well. You can imagine why Rebecca wanted to wrap her fingers around him. His subsequent trauma and rage is palpable in every scene. Kristin Scott Thomas is glorious, she deserves an award nom here and there. Bonus Keeley Hawes is always a good addition to any production. Lily James is handicapped by playing a very mousey and insecure character. It’s a role where you can’t coast on looks, presence or memorable lines. The strength of your acting will determine your success in this film. She nailed the insecurity and fear, and you could also see why Maxim would be so attracted to her, even though she has an unassuming demeanour. The film itself is gorgeous, and does capture the sinister and romantic atmosphere of the book. A perfect rainy Sunday afternoon of a movie.
I dunno, maybe I’m old but if you don’t want to be caught doing a thing, don’t do the thing?
@Roserose:
THIS + 10000000000%
If this is all she has to say through her sources, she should just stay silent.
She cannot play the victim. The only thing she could say was that she didn’t know he was still married or thought they had an open marriage.
But that doesn’t look to be the case, so she should go back to not talking about it.
See when you do clownery……
*in Mr. Bennet’s voice* And yet, I am unmoved.
Also: someone said she looks like a character from Wallace and Gromit and I can’t get over it.
OMG I can’t believe I didn’t see it until you said it!
The Wallace and Gromit comment NAILS it. Here’s a pre-fame photo that shows it clearly:
https://www.listal.com/viewimage/2796816
She obviously got a thorough makeover when she started gaining fame, and made a huge effort to become generically pretty. While i’m sure that is an asset in Hollywood, I rather like her more oddbeat look in the photo above.
I’m tired of this already. They both fucked up and are both assholes. I don’t care how they feel. I do care for Catherine and the kids.
And if she was so horrified by the whole thing, why did she cuddle up to him AFTER the first pics dropped and they were on their way back?
The Italian government are actually calling out Lilly and Dominic for disrespecting the vivid rules of social distebcibgbwhen both were joined at the hip doing their Italian bike peddeling .
I noticed the usual “home wrecker label ” isn’t being branded aboit by media, considering isn’t that what Lilly has done with a married man also why isn’t Dominic being called out as a “cheating husband”?
On Twitter, people were attacking his wife, for putting on an awkward show of unity. As if any of this is her fault. She’s not famous, so she has no guidebook on how to behave when you’re publicly embarrassed, no PR person going to bat for her, and she has four children whom she’s probably trying to protect by minimising the drama as much as possible.
Whatever. I don’t believe anything she says. I’ve never liked her, and I have no particular reason why. Maybe she seems like just another Katherine Heigl. Young, full of herself, difficult and controlling. BUT. She isn’t married. This is not on her. She boned a married man. He, on the other hand, is married. He carries the responsibility, he cheated, he broke vows, he hurt, he manipulated.
Apparently she personally knew his wife as well, and also called her after the photos came out and lied about her relationship with her husband. She is a full, willing accomplice in causing pain to another woman and I don’t understand this obsession with only assigning responsibility to the married party. She helped him hurt, manipulate, and cheat.
This!
I think the obsession is with making the married party to blame as well. Almost every single time the married man gets away with no or little change to his reputation while the OW is FOREVER branded a homewrecker and carries almost all of the blame. So I don’t think anyone is trying to make her blameless. But the fact is, he is the homewrecker. He, literally, wrecked his own dang home with his actions. He is the one who supposedly loved his wife and children and he is the one who set aside that love for his own selfish interests. She doesn’t get a pass, but I’m soooooo flippin’ tired of the OW being branded while the man trots off to his next affair, untouched by the fact that he broke his vows.
Yeah I am always a bit baffled by people who lay no blame on the co-cheater, stuff like “well they made no vows, they are not the married one”. Do you really need to take a vow or make a legal contract (marriage is primarily a legal contract) with a person to not hurt them, is decency really so outdated? I think the bare minimum we can expect from people is that they don’t deliberately set out to hurt others.
I have to agree with you here. A close friend of mine cheated on her husband–not in a one time, made a drunken mistake kind of way, but a full on sneaking around affair with another man. She eventually got caught, her husband divorced her, and she is now married to her former side piece. I always thought my friend was a huge asshole for doing that to her husband (who was a genuinely good guy and didn’t deserve that), and I equally side-eyed (and continue to side-eye to this day) her current husband. He was very aware she was married and fully participated in the charade of their sneaking around trying not to get caught. It wasn’t 100% on her. It was both of them being terrible and willingly hurting people.
She knew her personally? Damn.
Don’t get me wrong, I think single women who knowingly enter relationships with married men are @-u-n-t-s. But I really go after the party that’s married. Also, I’ve never had a friend who had a relationship with someone who’s married. I’d be pretty angry and devastated. Karma’s a bitch.
+1,000,000.
She knew what she was doing. She knew he was married. She’s complicit in his cheating. They’re both a-holes.
Horrified about being complicit in a douchebag being unfaithful to his wife? Horrified that he’s now making a mockery of if and capitalizing on it for his projects (he got cast as royal philanderer Prince Charles on one of Netflix’s biggest shows)? Guess what. Men who cheat on their wives will do awful sh-t like that. Because men who cheat on their wives are not good men.
Two things – there should be harsher consequences for douche-dude too. I hope there will be karma for him. And at the same time, Lily is not a vulnerable 20 year old starlet. She’s 30 years old and has established herself. The only victims here are douche’s wife and their kids.
I would have kept having “secret” ice cream dates with Chris Evans instead.
Right? I don’t get her at all.
Interesting that she ultimately did do the Tonight Show interview. I wonder if it was Netflix PR or her own people who had a calm, gentle “GET YOUR DUMBASS IN FRONT OF A LAPTOP AND HONOR YOUR CONTRACTUAL COMMITMENT! IF YOU’RE EMBARRASSED ITS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!” conversation with her. 🙄
I’m guessing the cheated on wife is a bit more horrified than Lily.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
If you want to have an affair, there are endless places you can go beside doing the most touristy thing in the most touristy part of a touristy city. Those weren’t cell phone pics from randoms on the street. It’s 2020 and you’re B-list famous, at best. You can avoid the paparazzi if you really want.
Lily James and Katie Holmes are horrible people and just as guilty as the men they canoodled with. They typify the type of woman who has the “all’s fair in love and war” attitude. I’ve been cheated on by boyfriends in the past, one with a woman I knew. A WOMAN I’D BEFRIENDED. We’d invite her over for dinner and she’d sit there like butter wouldn’t melt, all the while sleeping with my boyfriend on the sly. Nothing hurts as bad as that because you’ve been stabbed in the back twice by people you respected and trusted.
That’s awful, I can’t imagine going through that. I hope you’re in a healthier place now. *hug*
Thanks so much, it was a long time ago but still rankles.
@Jaded I’ve been there before too. A young woman who was the girlfriend of his flatmate. I can vividly remember the hurt, bewildered anger I felt (and he was completely unrepentant, saying ‘so what? She’s adorable’). Huge hugs to you. You deserve so much better than that.
So sorry Andrew’s Nemesis…they never are repentant. His explanation was “You’re steak but sometimes I just want a hamburger” (she was kind of plain). Comparing me to a piece of meat was not the mea culpa I expected. I moved into the spare room, found an apartment a week later and never looked back.
I’m sorry…. it does still smart, long after it’s all said and done with. Mine was my roomate and new boyfriend. I will just say that I moved out shortly after that and never looked back. But it still was the worst.
So incredibly sorry that happened to you!! I’ve been there myself. An ex best friend from college who kept my long-term boyfriend “comfortable” while I was still living out East and they both lived in Chicago. And then she ghosted me for a year, acting like I had done something awful to her. Only later did I discover that she would join my boyfriend on dinner dates with some of my other friends who admitted to me how uncomfortable it was to see them show up together , hanging all over each other, acting like they were a couple. No one at the time had the heart to tell me the truth. They all just let me go crazy on my own, thinking I was having a mental breakdown for no reason. I wound up cutting all of those people out of my life but it really sucked, as I’d been best friends with most of them for over a decade. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, but I just feel like women should support and prop each other up, particularly since so much of the world seems intent on tearing us down.
Ugh. If Lily was just banging Dominic for convenience or fun, that makes me side-eye her even more. Like, you’re an attractive girl, you could probably have your pick of just about anyone (let’s be honest, it’s really not that hard to get laid if that’s what one is after)… Yet you pick a husband and father of four to casually bump uglies with? Not a good look.
I’m also disgusted that Dominic just announced his role in the Crown after all of this. It’s almost like a PR stunt that he is benefitting from, meanwhile Lily is taking the hits in the press. Also not a good look.
I haven’t read the comments yet and I likely agree with most of them. I just wanted to say I am amazed at how much a smile changes her face! I’ve only seen the pics of her scowling on a red carpet or canoodling with a married man.
She did’t take the vow, he did. I’m done with the narrative that it is a woman’s responsibility to both “control her man” and “not entice” a married man. Men have self-control, and they can say whatever they want. He’s the one who messed up.
The unmarried party also has self-control and the capacity to be empathetic toward the spouse. And judging from her withdrawing from professional commitments and the public eye in general and her “hOrRoR” at the photos, I think it’s obvious Lily ALSO messed up.
Of course she does, but we have no idea what he told her. Miranda Lambert—that’s a pattern—that I can see as self-destructive behavior and I feel bad for her and her lack of self-worth. But this—we just don’t know.
I think the married person has the greater responsibility, because they’ve made vows and they’re committed to another person, but the affair partner bears some responsibility too. Anything we do that is certain to cause an innocent party pain is something we should think twice about.
New Rebecca looks very bad and not true to the book (it wasn’t a passionate romance; he liked her because she was mousey and bland and subservient and gentle in contrast to crazy ex-wife). Think Lily is very effed up due to breakup with Matt Smith and is launching herself into these weird hookups to get over him.
YES to the Rebecca observation. They seem to have made it a romance in which two modelesque 30-somethings have a mad, passionate affair. That’s the kind of relationship he had with the FIRST Mrs De Winter, not the SECOND.
I think James would do whatever she wants to do and with whomever she wants to do it with regardless of what people think, but she got caught. Note to self— do what you want to do but be way more discrete next time and avoid being left out to dry by cowardly lover. He’s a cad, she has to take most of the blame while he hides in his wife’s castle.
“Do what you want to do with whomever you want to do it” is a TERRIBLE policy. It causes innocent people harm. This is why so many Americans won’t wear masks or practice social distancing.
Sorry, but NOT sorry, she completely sucks. She got with a married man and had a torrid affair in public no less. That he is complete garbage goes without saying. But I am so sick of these women who willingly hook up with married men. Even if he told her he was separated, WAIT until you see confirmation of a divorce or legal separation. There are so many single men in the world that no woman needs to hop in the bed of any married man even if he is separated. As women we have to understand that we are always going to be painted as homewreckers if and when it turns out the guy we’re hooking up with turns out be very much married and not at all separated. It would have taken her less than a minute to do some online research and discover that he is not only married, but also very much living with his wife and children which throws cold water on the whole “she thought he was separated” theory. I feel like as women we deal with enough mysoginy and bullshit on a daily basis. Let’s not give anyone even more ammunition to trash us.
I’m horrified by this whole story. She can do what she wants with anyone she wants and I don’t care. And the attention is mostly on her, a single woman, and not the married man in the story. Remember, Lily didn’t make a vow to the wife, the asshat man did.
I’m still having a hard time believing this was not some tawdry PR stunt. Ever since the news of their “affair” broke, my amazon Fire has been heavily suggesting I watch The Affair and Rebecca. Coincidence? Nah.
I think that’s just because Rebecca is a big new release with famous actors in a year when there haven’t been many big new releases with famous actors. And since Dominic West is in The Affair, it makes good PR sense to advertise both.
Clearly Lily James and Her Team are trying to save face by claiming that She was horrified and shocked when the pictures came out.
When really She knew all along that they were coming.
But like I said in My Last Post. Overall I think Lilly will be fine. I just think it will a few years before She get’s back on Her feet again. Just like with Kristen Stewart.