After School by Casey Lewis

Rare Beauty named Off Campus’s Ella Bright their first-ever celebrity ambassador; Heated Rivalry’s Sophie Nélisse is starring in the Netflix adaptation of This Summer Will Be Different; Jenna Ortega and Rose Byrne are teaming up for gymnastics thriller Nasty; Addison Rae is teasing a Fortnite collaboration; and Disney+ is rebootingThe Mickey Mouse Club, the kids’ show that made Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake famous.

Gracie Abrams is the new face of Coco Mademoiselle; Lana Del Rey says she’s dropping not one but two albums soon; HBO is releasing a new Euphoria retrospective; and critics are saying Anya Taylor-Joy’s new show is “one of the year’s best.” ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE BIRDING, theatlantic Though birding’s Gen Z rebrand started during the pandemic, I first became aware of the phenomenon in 2024, when Gothamist reported that a young “wacky new birding group is ruffling some feathers” in Greenpoint.

Cara Delevingne is on the cover of (Phillip Picardi’s!) Playboy; Phoebe Bridgers did a surprise performance of “Lost Boys” on Fallon (I’m very interested in whatever dress it is that she’s wearing); Suni Lee’s gymnastics comeback will be the subject of the first Fanatics Studios documentary; PinkPantheress is making her acting debut in the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once follow-up; and just how big is Ella Langley right now?

Meet the 11-year-old actress leading Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie; Hailey Bieber’s Gap limited-edition collaboration, the Hailey Jean, drops July 16; Miu Miu Beauty taps Little Simz to be its newest ambassador; and the new trailer for Ryan Murphy’s The Shards starring Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere is fun.

Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶 This is arriving a little later than I would like because my walking pad — which I hadn’t realized was so crucial to my ability to read and write and edit — was just recalled, a development I only discovered because it unceremoniously stopped working and I went in search of a product manual, leading me to learn that Amazon had erased it from existence.

Quen Blackwell launched a collaboration with MAC Cosmetics; Connor Storrie and Chase Infiniti are among the first-time Emmy nominees; Teen VoguecallsSterling Point, from Megan Park and the creators of Gossip Girl, “the next great teen drama”; and disappointed millennials are accusingDisney of “whitewashing” the next generation of Cheetah Girls ahead of the fourth movie.

Justin Bieber will co-headline the World Cup final halftime show; I’d love to know how much Dunkin’ paid Kylie Jenner to resurrect “King Kylie”; Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo battle it out for No. 1 on the Billboard charts; a Britney Spears biopic from New Girl creator Liz Meriwether is in the works; and KATSEYE made a movie.

Welcome back to After School Monday Wednesday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers.

I’m going to take a few days off for my birthday, for America’s birthday, for a long weekend road trip, but mostly because Taylor Swift’s wedding is about to consume the news cycle for at least 72 hours.

Stranger Things star Sadie Sink is on the cover of Nylon; Moses Martin is a model now; Melat Kiros is poised to be the first Gen Z woman in Congress; Charles Melton is the face of the “Milk Man Hydration Calendar,” Big Dairy’s 2026 riff on the Got Milk? campaign; and I was amused to learn, via Vanity Fair, that Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly hired Karla Welch, best known (to me, at least) as Justin Bieber’s longtime stylist.