The Queen Is Alive and the Hollywood Unlocked Intern Did It (Updated)

Yesterday, a blog called Hollywood Unlocked exclusively and reasonably reported that Queen Elizabeth had died.

The person behind the byline WPengine (which appears to be a security measure taken to protect the anonymity of staff members but has only been used to post this one story, according to this disclaimer) wrote:

Socialites, it is with our deepest regret to inform you that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has died. Sources close to the Royal Kingdom notified us exclusively that Queen Elizabeth has passed away. She was scheduled to attend the wedding of British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, but was found dead.

I was devastated, but I had the assurance of former “Love and Hip Hop” star and Hollywood Unlocked CEO Jason Lee that this report was airtight. According to a notes app post to Instagram last night, he has never lied, has never been wrong, trusts his sources, had yet to see an official statement from the palace otherwise, and would be at the Donda concert that night.

Here he is at the Donda concert in Miami Beach, posing solo and again and with “The Money Team,” his presence at which confirms he’s never lied and has never been wrong, at least.

I slept fitfully, clutching my stick. But this morning, in a Twitter post by Hollywood Unlocked, it appears that god had indeed saved the queen. She’s alive, and the Hollywood Unlocked intern – who is not the site’s CEO Jason Lee — fucked up big time by publishing a draft by mistake.

So the queen’s alive (but might have rigor mortis), and Jason Lee has never lied and never been wrong, and the intern did it. As of Wednesday morning at 9:20 EST, the post has not been updated to correct the mistaken death report. Does the Queen live to jubbly another day? We will watch Hollywood Unlocked for updates.

UPDATE:

On Wednesday morning, Hollywood Unlocked CEO Jason Lee posted that he’d just woken up (after Kanye West’s Donda 2 concert) to find “some fake account posting a retraction” of his publication’s EXCLUSIVE yesterday claiming that Queen Elizabeth II had died, which is still up on the Hollywood Unlocked website.

Gawker regrets the fact checking error regarding the account “@HollywoodUL,” but would be remiss not to point out that something strange is happening with this Twitter handle, which has existed since June 2019 and has consistently boosted Hollywood Unlocked stories. In fact, this very account retweeted Lee’s accusation of it being a phony. Meanwhile, Lee’s personal Twitter bio does not link to a Twitter account for his site, only an Instagram account.

We allow for the possibility that Hollywood Unlocked is behind the tweet in question and juicing it for the sake of clicks. We also allow for the possibility that god did indeed save the queen.