
Scott Wolf's estranged wife makes incendiary new claims about separation after she was hospitalized by cops
Scott Wolf's estranged wife Kelley took to Instagram Thursday with a series of fiery accusations—including that she was 'held against her will' just months ago and that she initiated their separation over a year ago.
Kelley, 48, announced her split from Wolf last week after 21 years of marriage—but had already sparked widespread concern after DailyMail.com obtained 911 audio revealing she was taken away in handcuffs during a disturbing incident at a luxury Utah resort.
According to the recording, Utah County Sheriff's deputies transported her to a hospital following what was described as a serious 'mental health' episode.
After breaking her silence with a bizarre Instagram post showing her hospital band while sitting at a bar—captioned simply 'Hi' and 'God bless us'—Kelley returned to social media with even more incendiary accusations.
In her latest post, she claimed that 'a small but very vocal group' of friends 'had me held against my will,' saying their justification was that they were 'worried' about her.
Her blunt response? 'Wow. F--- them.'
In her latest post, she claimed that 'a small but very vocal group' of friends 'had me held against my will,' saying their justification was that they were 'worried' about her
She also doubled down on her separation timeline, writing that she 'initiated' the split from Scott Wolf 'a year ago.'
DailyMail.com has not received a response to its request for comment from Scott Wolf.
Kelley elaborated on what she described as a disturbing intervention attempt by friends, accusing them of overstepping while disguising control as concern.
'They called the cops from a beach town in Florida or somewhere seaside… while sipping cocktails,' she wrote in her Instagram post. 'That's not love. That's control.'
'What happened was legal. But it wasn't right,' she continued. 'And it should never be that easy to weaponize concern—especially against women.'
In a separate post, Kelley claimed, 'Apparently, I'm also one of the strongest women a certain mental hospital has ever met.'
She added, 'I was offered medication. I refused every single one. I laid in bed for five days—sober, clear, and calm.'
Addressing the status of her relationship with Wolf, Kelley wrote that she 'initiated a separation almost a year ago' and has been 'trying to file for divorce for months,' blaming the delay on 'legal counsel.'
After breaking her silence with a bizarre Instagram post showing her hospital band while sitting at a bar—captioned simply 'Hi' and 'God bless us'—Kelley returned to social media with even more incendiary accusations
'Yes, the official petition came from the other party, but let the record show: I've been grieving this marriage for years,' she shared.
Despite the turmoil, Kelley said being single is 'surprisingly great,' and hinted at future possibilities: 'But one day, I might get married again.'
For now, her focus is on healing and family.
'I'll be by the pool. With my kids. Living my actual, beautiful, grounded, powerful life,' she wrote.
Kelley and Scott Wolf share three children: Lucy, Miller, and Jackson.
This comes after eerie new details emerged about the shock video of Kelley.
In the clip she insisted that she would 'go on my own,' before one of the officers was heard asking: 'You got that arm?' followed by what seemed to be the sound of handcuffs clicking shut.
A deputy assured her she was 'not going to jail,' while adding that she 'made some comments to your dad, and comments to people that concern - are concerning.'
Kelley claimed: 'I think this is shameful and Scott Wolf has been abusing me and now you're abusing me more.' There is no indication that these allegations are true. It is unclear what Kelley meant by 'abuse.'
Now, the authorities have given their side of the story behind the disturbing footage - and revealed where they took her after she was detained.
The incident unfolded Friday morning at the Sundance Resort in Sundance, Utah, where Kelley had been staying since Wednesday, according to People.
A press release by local law enforcement said: 'Deputies responded to the Sundance Resort for a report of a female that needed some help. Upon speaking with the female, our Deputies learned that she had made concerning comments to a family member, and she also made similar comments to our Deputies. For that reason, our Deputies transported the female to a local hospital.'
A spokesperson for the Utah County Sheriff's Office explained further: 'Typically, when we transport somebody in any of our patrol vehicles, they are placed in properly-fitted hand restraints, just for their protection and our protection as law enforcement as well.'
The spokesperson continued: 'So that's what happened today: she was placed in hand restraints, placed into a vehicle, and transported by our deputies to a hospital.'
Early in the footage, Kelley could be heard saying: 'Oh my God, this is not happening! Fine, I'll go. I'll go on my own. Please, I'll go on my own!'
'You got that arm?' said one of the deputies, and a noise that sounded like handcuffs being applied was then distinctly audible, as Kelley said: 'Wow. Wow.'
She lambasted the officers: 'This is shameful, gentlemen. Look at this. Look at this woman. This is shameful. Be ashamed of yourselves, gentlemen.'
One of the deputies said: 'You're not going to jail,' followed by another sentence that was drowned out as Kelley, a life coach, snapped: 'I know what I'm doing. I've done this. This is my job. Shame on all of you.'
'You've made some comments to your dad, and comments to people that concern - are concerning,' explained one of the officers.
Kelley then directed their attention to the fact the exchange was being recorded on her phone, saying: 'You might wanna turn this off. It's on. Would you like to turn it off? You want me to turn it off?'
She clarified for the officers that she 'didn't mean to' stream the incident, and one of the policemen offered: 'I can turn it off if you'd like me to,' to which she said: 'Please turn it off. Please.'
By the end of the video, Kelley was finally visible, asking the deputies to hand her the phone so that she could switch it off on her own.
Kelley later posted an Insta Stories photo of her personal effects laid out in front of her, including a handbag, a Gatorade bottle and a baseball cap.
'This is horrible. I have been taken against my will. Please check in on my kids. Also... I am happy!! Happier than I have ever been,' she wrote. 'I have NO idea why or how this is happening in AMERICA.'
Kelley added: 'I am compliant, calm and respectful, and hopefully this is all sorted very quickly. In the meantime, be kind to each other. This is one of the darkest things I've ever experienced.'
The astonishing episode comes following Scott's statement on the divorce, which he issued after Kelley announced their split in a cryptic Instagram post.
On Tuesday, Kelley, 48, shared the emotional update with her followers, writing, 'It is with a heavy heart that Scott and I are moving forward with the dissolution of our marriage.'
She continued, 'This has been a long, quiet journey for me—rooted in hope, patience, and care for our children.'
Just hours after Kelley's post, the Party of Five star, 57, confirmed the news in a statement to People, revealing that he had initiated the split.
'After 21 years of marriage, I have made the most difficult decision of my life, and filed for divorce from my wife Kelley,' he said.
'Our children have always been, and continue to be, the loves of our lives and our every priority, so I kindly ask for privacy at this time as we help guide them through this new chapter.'
Both Scott and Kelley have publicly indicated that their focus remains on protecting their family as they move through this new chapter.
In her initial Instagram post, Kelley opened up about her emotional state, speaking of 'healing' and embracing 'freedom' as she steps into the future.
She also offered a heartfelt tribute to her estranged husband, writing, 'Scott Wolf is one of the best fathers I've ever known and one of the best partners a woman could have the privilege of sharing life with.
'He is kind, thoughtful, funny, and beautiful in spirit.'
Though she made clear she wouldn't be discussing the reasons behind the split publicly, Kelley expressed peace with how she's handled the situation.
'While I will not speak publicly about the details, I feel peace knowing that I've done everything I can to walk this path with integrity and compassion,' she wrote.
She added that she and Scott remain committed to raising their children with love and stability.
'We both look forward to an extraordinary life centered around the most extraordinary children. My priority has always been their wellbeing—and my own healing. That will never change.'
Kelley ended the emotional message with a request for privacy and a message of quiet strength: 'I am stepping into a chapter of peace, freedom, and protection—with grace. Thank you to the many friends, family, and professionals who have held space for me with love.
'Please respect our privacy during this time. May we all remember: healing isn't loud. It's sacred.'
Accompanying her words was an image of a lioness with three eagles flying above.
The announcement of the split followed weeks after Kelley shared a cryptic message hinting at feeling 'misunderstood' and a desire to 'tell the truth.'
In a poem posted to her followers, she spoke about breaking free from old patterns and expectations to find true freedom.
'I know that may sound bold, but when I read it back, I sat in stillness and wept,' she wrote. 'Because somehow, these words came straight from the center of my heart — clear, fierce, and free.'
She encouraged her followers to listen to their inner voice when it's time to change and to hold onto 'love and hope and optimism and beauty,' reminding them, 'It's WORTH IT! YOU ARE WORTH IT!'
Kelley acknowledged the challenges she's faced recently but vowed not to be dragged down by negativity.
'I came here to tell the truth. To write with integrity. To live with my whole heart— even when it's misunderstood,' she said.
She added that she's never felt more clear, light, or happy, closing with a hopeful note: 'I cannot wait to love and live in a way I didn't even know was possible.'
Just one week prior to Tuesday's divorce announcement, Scott and Kelley celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary.
The couple did not publicly honor the milestone on their respective social media pages.
The year prior, Kelley made a concerning revelation while paying tribute to Scott on their 20th wedding anniversary.
The reality TV star revealed that she 'almost walked out' the relationship early in their engagement when she noticed Scott starting to 'poke at me, challenge me.'
'The first few times, I wrote it off as stress or the beginnings of getting to know somebody's idiosyncrasies,' Kelley wrote. 'But then, I had this feeling come back to me that I had in the past. It was a feeling that I didn't like, and a feeling, I had worked very hard to process, heal, and make sure I noticed when/if it ever came again.
'It was the feeling of self betrayal. It was the feeling of bending myself in order to accommodate another person even when I knew that I had done nothing wrong.'
She said that she previously experienced 'this feeling' in a past 'toxic relationship.'
'My old pattern had returned. I was scrambling to make myself more accommodating, less aggravating, whatever it was that seem to be pushing him away. And then I woke up one morning and said 'wait a minute' I've done this game before and I'm not doing this again,' she wrote.
Kelley recalled taking off her engagement ring and handing it to Scott before telling him that she 'will not stick around while somebody tries to excavate fault in me.'
'I turned around and walked towards the door. And like I had done before in my life, I was ready to walk out the door with the girl that I promised to save.'
When left with the possibility of losing her forever, Kelley said that Scott stepped up and fought for their relationship.
'But, this love story wasn't over. Scott looked at me, and some thing happened…
'He said, "You are really going to leave. I believe you. I can see it. I can feel it. And there is no chance in hell I am going to let that happen, so let's do this,"' Kelley recalled.
'"Let's do this hard part, the uncomfortable part. The part where I have to look in the mirror and see my old pattern where I have tried to find fault in somebody in the hopes that I would prove that nobody can really do the hard stuff and stick around."'
'We all know that our patterns come from the things that have happened to us in life. Scott had never been shown what it looked like when LOVE really showed up.'
Kelley said that after that moment she and Scott were 'more bonded, more connected, and more clear about the promise we were about to make to each other.'
She said their wedding day was full of 'magic' and 'hope' and that her almost walking out the door 'set the stage for so many things' in their 20-year romance.
'Marriage, friendships, relationships of all kinds are a dance. Never to be a straight line. Never without plot, twists, and highs and lows,' she wrote.
'There is one thing we both learned that day, you have to be willing to love yourself the most to truly love somebody else, the most.
And yes, like all amazing love stories, we continue to choose the power of love, over and over,' Kelley concluded.
Scott also posted in honor of their 20th wedding anniversary, where he admitted that their marriage had been 'tested these last few years.'
'As blessed as we have been and are, we have surely been tested these last few years. You continue to be the force of light and love and life that makes it all make sense,' he wrote.
'You are the rock of our family, and even when pushed beyond what sometimes even feels possible, you have always found a way to hold on to who you truly are, and who and what you love the most.'
He also gushed about their 'three beautiful children, several generations of fur babies, and what feels like a lifetime of adventures and experiences together.'
Scott concluded his heartfelt tribute by expressing hope that his and Kelley's 'lights continue to shine together forever.'
Kelley last posted Scott on her Instagram in July 2024 during a couples trip to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Meanwhile, Kelley last appeared on Scott's Instagram in February as he called her and their daughter Lucy his 'forever Valentines.'
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Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'I reached 4st 7lb and was told I had two weeks to live.' A-list artist LUCY SPARROW on her anorexia battle
On artist Lucy Sparrow's left wrist, beneath a huge, diamanté-studded imitation Rolex crafted from felt, is a tattoo that reads: 'Don't forget to eat your lunch and make some trouble.' The 38-year-old had it done after leaving the Promis Hay Farm clinic in Kent last year, where she was treated for anorexia so severe she came close to losing her life. Now, it serves as a daily reminder to her: 'To make your art, you need energy,' she says. Quirky, joyful and wildly ambitious, Sparrow's work has made her a leading light of a new generation of British artists. Her immersive installations, built to look like real shops and filled with thousands of everyday items, from baked beans and McCain oven chips to Rimmel make-up, all painstakingly hand-stitched from felt, have won rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. At Buckingham Palace, where she installed a felt picnic spread to mark the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee, King Charles, no less, asked her how she made her salt and vinegar crisps so realistic. (She replied she hand-painted each one with PVA glue and then let them dry outside in the sun.) In the US, celebrity admirers include Drew Barrymore and Mark Ruffalo, the latter even queueing patiently for her exhibition at New York's Rockefeller Center to tell her how much he loved it. Yet behind her soaring career, Sparrow was hiding the eating disorder she'd been battling for decades. 'I've been through periods of recovery in my life, where it's been secondary to other things, but it's always been there in the background,' she says. 'Then last year, I stopped being able to eat altogether.' Today, she's curled up with her felt replica banana, which she named Sebastian. Wearing a pinafore dress and white tights, Sparrow appears childlike. Which seems appropriate for the maker of soft, fuzzy, nostalgia-infused pop art. But she's also both smart and brave, speaking with candour about her ordeal. 'I want to tell my story,' Sparrow says. 'There's a saying in the support meetings I go to: 'Secrets grow in the dark and shrink in the light.' The more we bring them out, the less power they have. I've hidden it for so long, but I don't want to be ashamed of it any more.' Sparrow grew up in Bath, where her mum taught her to sew at four and bought her felt to make her own toys. 'I was instantly obsessed with making replicas of objects,' she says. 'I knew from when I was tiny that I wanted to be an artist.' Academically gifted, she won a scholarship to a prestigious private school, but in its high-pressured environment her mental-health struggles began. 'It was an extremely privileged world, and I was looked down upon,' she says. 'But I was also very grateful to be there and worked really hard, so it was incredibly intense.' First, her anxiety manifested as obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. 'I was terrified of germs, and I'd bleach my hands and boil my toothbrush,' she says. By the age of 13, this was spilling over into restricting the food she ate, including 'meat, eggs, anything that could make me sick'. When she noticed herself losing weight, 'I started falling down into this abyss,' she says. 'It was nothing to do with how I looked; with anorexia, all you want to do is destroy yourself, to disappear.' As her weight plummeted, the school instigated regular weigh-ins, which she cheated with stones in her pockets and by downing litres of water. She attended an eating disorder clinic as an outpatient and underwent weekly NHS therapy with her family. She describes the approach back then as, 'Very accusatory. 'This is all your fault, you must not want to get better.' It made me feel so alone, because I wasn't doing it on purpose. The closest thing I can liken it to is being possessed by a demon.' Eventually, at 16, she weighed just 4st 7lb and doctors at the clinic where she was an outpatient told her she might have as little as two weeks to live. If she dropped even the tiniest amount more, she would be sectioned and force-fed. 'I knew I didn't want to die,' she says. Instead, she dropped out of school, enrolled at the local tech college to study art and slowly, gradually, began to eat again. 'My weight was restored, but mentally I was still ill,' she says. 'I was running on manic energy, my OCD was off the charts and self-harming became my outlet.' She managed six months at University Arts Bournemouth before realising that she couldn't continue. Then, knowing she wanted to make art full time, she took a radical step to earn enough to support herself: for five years, she worked as a stripper in nightclubs in Brighton and London. She called herself Roxy and looked 'very alternative, with my glasses on', chatting to customers between dances. It had another, unexpected, benefit: 'It actually stopped me self-harming and starving myself, because I had to show my body.' In 2014, she broke through as an artist with The Cornershop, which began as a Kickstarter campaign and went viral after opening in an abandoned shop in London's East End. Each of the 4,000 felt items on the shelves were for sale, with prices starting at £1 for a lottery ticket and Sparrow herself staffing the till. 'I couldn't believe there were queues around the block,' she says. 'I sold the shop 40 times over.' Since then, her projects have included a faux sex shop in London's Soho in 2015 titled Madame Roxy's Erotic Emporium; in 2019, Lucy's Delicatessen at New York's Rockefeller Center; and, in 2021, a fully stocked pharmacy, The Bourdon Street Chemist, at London gallery Lyndsey Ingram. Sparrow describes making her art as 'escapism, Prozac-like: a wonderful gentle hug'. It has always been the one thing capable of calming her busy mind. Last year, however, her refuge contributed to her relapse. She was working 18-hour days and travelling a lot; then, when her two-year relationship with a restaurateur ended, she isolated herself. 'Almost overnight, I thought, 'I'm going to go fully back into my eating disorder, because I have no one to stay normal for,'' she says. 'I didn't have proper treatment as a teenager, and the relapse was a long time coming. It was always going to happen when a major life event tipped it over the edge.' Sparrow quickly lost a dangerous amount of weight, terrifying her loved ones. 'I could normally shake myself out of it and force myself to eat, but I lay in bed, my heart racing, and I realised I'd completely lost all control,' she says. 'It had me by the neck.' She found the private clinic Promis Hay Farm online and checked in, a decision that would save her life. For ten weeks, Sparrow had intense therapy, funded by the success of her art. 'So many pieces of the puzzle fell into place,' she says. 'There's a strong history of mental illness in my family, so there was trauma that I had never dealt with. I realised it wasn't my fault, and that it was a form of addiction, but that I also needed to take responsibility. How I moved forward was my choice.' Addressing the deeply ingrained, obsessive behaviours that had allowed her anorexia to flourish was a major step. Another turning point was when she realised the link between her eating disorder and the theme she returns to most often in her work: food. 'My art had become an elaborate coping mechanism to mask difficult emotions,' she says. 'I was so avoidant of food, so hungry, I'd become obsessed with it. I realised that with my art, I was feeding myself food that wasn't real, and that's how I managed to starve myself for so long.' Sparrow now has a team of six full-time staff working with her at her Felt Cave studio in Sudbury, Suffolk. Next month her new installation, The Bourdon Street Chippy, an immersive fish and chip shop comprising more than 65,000 pieces, opens back at the Lyndsey Ingram gallery in Mayfair. Each item will be available to buy, with prices as reasonable as ever – although pieces from her previous collections sell for tens of thousands at auction. Her recovery has been steady, but Sparrow will never take it for granted. 'I'm not saying it's easy or enjoyable,' she says. 'But my goal is to be so recovered that I can tell people going through this level of hell that there is a way out.'


The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
America is showing us football in its final dictator form – we can't afford to look away
Should we give it a miss? Is it best to stay away from next summer's Trump-Infantino US World Cup? Depending on your politics the answer may be a resounding no or a bemused shrug. Some will see pure drive-by entertainment. Why would anyone want to boycott a month-long end-of-days Grand Soccer Parade staged by two of the world's most cinematic egomaniacs? But it is a question that has been asked, and will be asked a lot more in the next year. Those who intend to travel will need to answer it by action or omission. Would it be better for dissenting media and discomfited football fans to simply no-platform this event? The picture is at least clearer now. After a week of the new steroid-fed Club World Cup we know what this thing will feel like and who it will benefit. There is no mystery with these events now, no sense of politics lurking coyly out of sight. Under Gianni Infantino Fifa has become a kind of mobile propaganda agency for indulgent regimes, right out in front twirling its pompoms, hitching its leotard, twerking along at the front of the parade like an unholy Uncle Sam. So we had the grisly sight this week of Donald Trump not just borrowing football's light, but wrestling it on to his lap and ruffling its hair, burbling like a random hot-button word generator about women and trans people, while Juventus players gawped in the background. We have the spectacle of both club and international football hijacked as a personal vanity platform for Infantino, the dictator's fluffer, the man who sold the world not once but twice. Infantino's status as a wildly over-promoted administrator has always had an operatic quality. But there is something far more sinister in his political over-reach, out there nodding along at the latest Oval Office freak-off, helping to legitimise each divisive statement, each casual erasure of process. Nobody gave Fifa a mandate to behave like this. Its mission is to promote and regulate. And yet here is it acting as a commercial disruptor in its own sport and as a lickspittle to the powerful, disregarding the human rights fluff and political neutrality enshrined in its 'statutes', offering zero transparency or accountability. To date Infantino's only public interface in the US is a 'fireside chat', AKA approved PR interview, at the Dick's Sporting Goods stage in New York. There he is, up there on the Stage of Dick's, mouthing platitudes to pre-programmed questions, high on his own power supply, the newly acquired Gianni glow-up eyebrows arched in a patina of inauthenticity. They say celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. Take a look at what football can do to you. And so far this tournament has presented the full grotesquery in store. What is the Club World Cup like on the ground? Pretty much the same as it is on the screen given this event is invisible in physical form beyond the stadiums. The key takeaway is confirmation of the weirdly jackboot, cult-like nature of the Infantino-shaped universe. Even the optics are trying to tell you something, all black holes, hard surfaces, gold, power-flash. Why does Fifa have its own vast lighted branding on the pitch like a global super-corporation or a military dictatorship? What is the Club World Cup logo supposed to represent, with its weird angular lines, the void at its heart? An obscure Stalinist plug socket? Darth Vader's space fighter? Not to mention the bizarre obsession with that shapeless and indefinable trophy, present on the big screen in every ground in weird scrolling closeup, one minute a Sauron's eye, the next some kind of finger-snapping torture instrument, with its secret draws full of ectoplasm, a dead crow, the personal effects of Pol Pot. Mainly there is the very openly manipulative nature of the spectacle, football in its final dictator form, with a sense of utter disdain for its captive consumer-subjects. Yes, they will literally put up with anything if we pipe it into their smartphones. So here is beauty, love, colour, connection, the things you're hard-wired to respond to, cattle-prodded into your nervous system for the benefit of assorted interests. Here is football reimagined as a kind of mass online pornography. Fifa even calls its media website Fifahub. With all this in mind some have suggested a World Cup and US boycott is the correct and logical response, not least in two recent articles published in these pages. The organisation Human Rights Watch has carried a warning about the implications of staging the tournament under the Trump regime. Guardian readers and social media voices have asked the same question from all sides of discourse. The hostile versions of this: if you don't like it then just don't come, we don't want you anyway [expletives deleted]. If you were worried about us in Qatar, western imperialist, why are you going to the US? And from the liberal left a concern that to report on sport is also to condone a regime that sends deportation officers to games, imposes travel bans on Fifa members and is edging towards another remote war. And all the while marches football around in a headlock, snapping its underwear elastic, saying thanks, Gianni, for the distracting firework show. This is not a normal situation. So why normalise it? Why give it legitimising light and heat? And yet, one week into the World Cup's rehearsal dinner, the only logical response is: you just have to go. Not only would a boycott serve no practical purpose; it would be counterproductive, an act of compliance for a regime that will happily operate without an opposing voice on the stage. There are two structural reasons for this. And a third that relates to the United States itself, or at least to the idea of the United States, to its possibilities, which are not defined by Trump, by the latest military action, or by Infantino. Most obviously, if you leave the stage you abandon the argument to the other person. Dissent remains a useful commodity. However pointless, ineffective and landlocked the process of pointing out the flaws and contradictions may have become, it is necessary to keep doing so. Qatar 2022 was a dictator show that simply sailed above the criticisms. But someone, however minor, has to make them, to offer at least some kind of counter-view. No-platforming an autocrat's show makes no sense on a basic level. These people would prefer you weren't there in any case. Whereas in reality the people platforming and enabling Trump and Infantino are not journalists trying to give another version of events, but the people who keep voting them into power, friendly dictators, subservient football associations and client media who will be present whatever happens. Fifa and its Saudi-backed broadcast partner Dazn are glossing up an army of in-house influencers and content-wanglers to generate a wall of approving noise. Is it healthy if these are the only voices at the show? Shouting into a void may have little effect. But you still have to shout. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Second, football does still have a value that steps outside the normal rules of show and spectacle. This is why it is coveted, courted and used like a weapon. Last week these pages carnied a logical, entirely legitimate wider view, written by two academics from City University New York, which concluded that a boycott was not just an option but 'necessary'. At the same time, the article defined the football World Cup as something that basically has no value, 'spectacles of recreation designed to distract people from their day-to-day lives, cultural and political branding opportunities for their hosts. For authoritarians, they have long been used as a tool to distract from or launder stains of human rights violations and corruption.' Which is definitely true. But it also reads like a vision of sport defined by the most joyless version of AI invented. Under this version of events no World Cup or Olympics would have taken place, because they are essentially worthless, home only to malevolent actors, lacking any notion of colour, human spirt, joy, art, beauty or connection. Who knows, maybe this is accurate now. It is undeniably true that the idea of football as a collective people's game is fairly absurd. Fans of football clubs struggle with this state of cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, the contrast of legacy identity and hard commercial reality. Liverpool are a community club owned by a US hedge fund. Manchester City see themselves as outsiders and underdogs, and are also owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family. Football is the enemy these days. But both sides of this are important, because without that emotional connection, without the act of faith that enables the warm, human part, everything becomes diminished, all our institutions toxic shells. To give up is to abandon sport for ever to the dictators and the sales people, to say, yeah, this just belongs to you now. No-platforming something that still means connection and culture and history. Are we ready for that yet? There will be another version of the present at some point. The final point is about the US, a deeply divided and unhappy place right now, and a much-derided host nation, not least by members of its own populace. What has it been like here? The evidence is that an actual World Cup is going to be very hard to negotiate, spread over vast spaces, with baffling travel times, unreliable infrastructure, and a 24-hour attention industry that is already busy gorging on every other spectacle available to the human race. The US has a reputation for peerless razzmatazz around public events. And while this is undeniably true with cultural spectacles it invented – rock'n'roll, presidential races, galactic shopping malls, enormous food, rural tornadoes, its own continental-scale sports – the US's version of other people's specialities, from cheese to professional football, can seem a little mannered. But the fact remains the actual games have been quite good. There has been a European-flavoured focus on tickets and empty seats. But 25,000 people on a weekday to watch Chelsea in an ill-defined game is decent evidence of willingness to stage this thing and develop the market. The dismay at 3,500 turning up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando overlooks the upside, the fact that 3,500 people actually turned up to Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD in Orlando. Sundowns get 9,000-odd even at home. How many of their South African fans can afford to travel for this? Fifa, which uses its faux-benevolence cleverly, will point out an African team received $2m (£1.7m) for winning that game. Do we want to develop something or not? A wider point is that football here is a game beloved of immigrant populations. There is a different kind of warmth, often among people without a platform or the means to make it to the matches so far. The waiter who adores Cristiano Ronaldo. The taxi driver who wants to talk for 40 minutes about Chelsea's wastefulness with academy players. The cop who loves the Colombian national team and is desperate for his son to see them in the flesh. As for the US itself, it still feels like false equivalence to state that this is now an actual dictatorship, a lost land, a place that doesn't deserve this show because of its flaws and structural violence. This has always been a pretty brutal nation, human life as a constant pressure wave, mainlining heat and light into your veins, but also always taking a bite. The opening week in Miami captured this feeling, football's most hungrily transactional event staged on a sunken green peninsula, a place where the sea seems to be punching holes in the land, but which is still constantly throbbing with life and warmth and beautiful things. There is a nostalgic attachment to the idea of the US for people of a certain age, 20th-century holdovers, brought up on its flaws and imperialism, but also its culture and brilliance. But for the visitor America does seem in a worse state than it did 20 years ago. There is an unhappiness, a more obvious underclass, a sense of neglected parts and surfaces. All the things that were supposed to be good – cars, plenitude, markets, voting, empowerment, civil rights, cultural unity, all the Cokes being good and all the Cokes being the same – seem to have gone bad. But this is also a democracy with an elected leader, albeit one with a lust for executive power and some sinister tendencies. Mainly the US seems to have a massive self-loathing problem. Perhaps you can say it is correct in this, that Trump is enacting actual harms. But Trump is also a symptom of that alienation and perceived decline. He's an algorithm-driven apparition. Say his name enough times and this cartoon will appear. America remains a great, messy, dangerous, flawed idea of a place. What else is the world currently offering? This is in any case where football will now live for the next year, an unquestioning supplicant in the form of its own autocratic leader. The game is not an indestructible product. It can be stretched thin and ruined by greed, is already at war with itself in many key places. It will at some point be necessary to pay the ferryman, even as the US is packed away a year from now and the sails set at Fifa House for all corners of the globe and then Saudi Arabia. However stormy the prospects, it is not quite the moment to abandon this ship for good.


Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Naomi Watts and daughter Kai Schreiber pose up a storm at Armani Beauty event after model teen came out as transgender
Naomi Watts and her daughter Kai Schreiber posed up a storm as they attended a Armani Beauty celebrating Luminous Silk Foundation and Concealer. The King Kong actress, 56, and her model daughter, 16, who she shares with actor Liev Schreiber, were among the stars at Wednesday's event, held at Twenty Three Grand in New York City. Naomi looked effortlessly chic as she donned a navy sparkly smock dress, featuring a boat neckline and draping fabric with stilettos. She was joined by her daughter Kai, who had her modelling debut at Paris Fashion Week for Valentino earlier this year. For the occasion, Kai wore a black high-neck sweater covered in multicoloured polka dots with a matching skirt. Naomi was seen helping her daughter with her make-up in sweet snaps from the event. Kai, who is transgender, recently spoke in-depth about how she had struggled 'with gender identity from a young age' and 'always wanted to grow up and be a beautiful, glamorous, influential woman, like Marilyn ' Monroe. She told Interview Magazine she has studied how people in the transgender community navigated stormy waters in the past. The daughter of the Ray Donovan star, 57, and two-time Oscar nominee, 56, named figures she found inspirational 'as a young trans girl' navigating life through turbulent times for the community. 'I'm always going to look up to the older generation of transgender people, especially in fashion,' Kai told the magazine. 'People like Alex Consani, Hunter Schafer, Hari Nef, Dara, Richie Shazam, Colin Jones, and so many more,' Kai said. 'It's so great that there's a strong community of us in the fashion world; it's really a doll takeover.' The nepo baby said that she had a breakthrough earlier this year when working for the fashion house Valentino. 'That job made me realise, 'OK, this is what I want to do,' Kai said. ' I want to be a supermodel. Period.' Kai opened up to the publication about what she's been doing in terms of honing her craft as a regular presence on the catwalk. Naomi looked effortlessly chic as she donned a navy sparkly smock dress, featuring a boat neckline and draping fabric with stilettos 'I've been practising my walks in the kitchen for years; my mom can show you all the videos I forced her to film,' Kai said. Kai also opened up about her fashion preferences in the wide-ranging chat with the publication - joking she's 'basic, but in a chic way.' Kai said of her couture choices: ' I love my low-rise jeans and black cardigan. That's my go-to outfit. I love when people have their own personal style. 'If you're presenting yourself in a unique, cool way, people are immediately drawn in and want to know more. If every person was walking around in the same outfit, fashion wouldn't be a thing.' Kai said that 'the world [is] more fun' with fashion in the mix. She took to Instagram to thank those involved with the feature as she said: 'I can't put into words how excited & grateful I am for this project. Thank you to the Interview team for the opportunity, and thank you Dara & everyone for making it such a fun and comfortable experience for me on set.' Naomi said on her Instagram that Kai was 'continuing to kill it' and that she was 'proud' of her. Kai has received public support from both of her famed folks, as Liev told Variety last month about what he felt was the most impactful moment as the parent of a trans child. 'Kai was always who Kai is,' The Manchurian Candidate actor said. 'But I suppose the most profound moment was her asking us to change her pronouns. 'To be honest with you, it didn't feel like that big of a deal to me only because Kai had been so feminine for so long.' The Perfect Couple star continued: 'Kai is such a fighter. It's important that she goes, "Hey, I am trans," and, "Look at me."'