Source: www.celebritymound.com

Al Reynolds continues to have a soft spot for Star Jones, despite their impending divorce.

“I still very much love her,” Reynolds told The Associated Press on Monday. “I do. I can’t lie to you.”

Jones’ soon-to-be ex-husband is opening up about his relationship with the former co-host of ABC’s “The View” in an interview being posted Tuesday on YouTube.

“I was approached by a number of media outlets to do interviews, and most of them wanted me to trash my wife,” Reynolds told the AP during a telephone interview Monday. “I wasn’t interested in participating in the sensationalism.”

Instead, the interview was filmed last month at the home of Reynolds’ publicist, Howard Bragman. Jones filed for divorce from Reynolds in March after three years of marriage.

Reynolds said his marriage to Jones began to unravel last year when Jones was launching her truTV talk show and Reynolds began teaching at Florida Memorial University in Miami. He said the pair separated in February, and he was served divorce papers in March. Reynolds was surprised when Jones issued a public statement about the dissolution of their marriage in April.

“I don’t know if I can point to a specific thing that happened,” said Reynolds. “I felt like we started to grow apart. I took a position down in Florida. I started working aggressively on my book. She was trying to get her show off the ground. We were also trying to deal with all the negative stuff after we allowed the media into our marriage.”

Reynolds, who now divides his time between New York and Miami, said he’s not gay, and the Internet and tabloid speculation about his sexuality - several bloggers refer to him as “Big Gay Al” - has damaged his professional reputation. The 37-year-old former banker said he has not dated anyone since the end of his relationship with Jones, nor has he spoken to the former prosecutor.

“I feel like I’ve still got a little bit of healing to do,” said Reynolds. “I’m not sure I could open that emotional side of myself up to anyone else right now. After the divorce is final, I’ll probably be a little bit more interested in that. Right now, I’m focusing on teaching and finishing my doctorate degree.”

Jones and Reynolds tied the knot in an over-the-top ceremony in November 2004. Jones was criticized for endlessly discussing the wedding and plugging its sponsors on “The View.” The negative reaction to the affair, which was attended by guests ranging from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Spike Lee, was cited by Barbara Walters as a reason why Jones’ contract wasn’t renewed in 2006.

Reynolds - who is originally from Horse Pasture, Va. - now agrees the wedding spun out of control but claims he thought such behavior was customary for celebrity nuptials. Reynolds is currently working on a financial help book aimed at the middle-to-low class, and tentatively titled “Bank On It.” He says he’s not interested in using the divorce as opportunity to fade out of the spotlight.

“I’m not a fade-away type of guy,” said Reynolds. “I’m a guy who progresses and moves forward. I was successful before I met Star, and I plan to be successful after Star. I’m in the public eye now. That’s the truth. It comes with responsibilities. I’m using it as an opportunity to educate and motivate people.”

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Years after coming clean about her gastric bypass, Star Jones is cracking fat jokes!

“If I punched every b-tch who called me fat, it would be dead bitches all up and down the highway,” Jones said during a taping of The Bad Girls Club reunion special (watch above; her joke is at 1:19 in)

The reunion episode airs Tuesday on Oxygen.

Last week Jones got into a public feud with Barbara Walters, who claimed Jones asked her to cover-up the gastric bypass on The View.

(source)

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Star Jones may have just filed for divorce, but soon-to-be-ex Al Reynolds checked out of his marriage nearly a year ago, according to friends of his.

The beginning of the end was reportedly last summer in Saint-Tropez, where the couple loudly fought on the beach over Star being Al’s sugar mama. One friend recounted an incident where Al refused to pay for beach chairs, demanding that Star fork over the cash.
“She paid for everything. He never even took out his wallet,” the pal snitched.

For the past year, the pair have been living separately, because of Al’s job as a professor of social science at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens (they actually do give degrees; we checked). But Reynolds hasn’t exactly been missing his wife’s company.

“When he is in Miami, he’s always on the beach or at the pool at the Delano,” a pal in South Beach tells us. Reynolds reportedly works on his tan all day, then parties hard at night. “He hits Mansion, Privé, Mokai and the Florida Room at the Delano four nights a week.”
And he isn’t alone.

“Al always has a posse of hot young dudes and scantily clad women with him,” our spy says. “He brings strippers back from Gold Rush strip bar to the Delano and dirty dances all night long.”

Ewwwwwww is pretty much all we can say.

(source)

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Nearly three and half years after they swapped “I dos” at their corporate-sponsored wedding, Star Jones and Al Reynolds are calling it quits. The National Enquirer reports the legal diva sent Al his walking papers a month ago.

“They hadn’t been seeing eye to eye for months and had already spent a great deal of time apart,” a friend of the couple told the Enquirer. “Finally, Star decided it was over. She told Al at the end of January that he had 30 days to get his act together or ‘get out.’”

The pair made one last public appearance at the Feb. 1 Baby Phat fashion show in New York City, but everything fell apart days later. That prompted Star to show Al the door ahead of schedule, the source said. “Al moved some of his things out of their Upper East Side apartment and returned to Miami, where he’d already been spending a lot of time recently.”

The Enquirer spoke to another insider who confirmed the breakup and revealed Star’s intention to make it permanent. “Star is planning to divorce Al.” As for reason behind the split, the source added, “I think Star felt Al had spent their marriage riding her success while she did all the heavy lifting. She resented it. Deep down, Star is a very old-fashioned woman who believes a man should support her emotionally, physically and financially. She now believes Al failed her.”

(source)

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STAR Jones is the first casualty of Court TV’s re-launch as truTV. Last night, the network canceled her daily talk show, with today’s episode the last, and said in a statement: “Star will continue as a contributing legal expert to our weekday trial coverage. We appreciate the work she has contributed over the last few months and look forward to the next phase of our relationship.” A truTV insider said, “They decided to go in a different direction. TruTV is not Court TV. It’s tabloidy. They wanted to dumb down her show. When she refused, they put no promotion behind it.” The good news is Jones, who’s rumored to have a three-year, $24 million contract, has a “pay-for-play deal,” an insider said. “She gets paid for the next couple of years to basically hang out with her husband, Al.” Jones is on “Today” once a week and is in talks with other networks. She said, “I’ve been treated wonderfully.”

(source)

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Star Jones & Natalie Cole

Whitney Port of The Hills and friends

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A RESPECTED Detroit preacher has sprung to the defense of Star Jones, who’s being maligned in Motown for supposedly ripping off a local charity and not showing at its 2006 “empowerment” event.

“Star is the victim here,” says the Rev. Horace Sheffield, who claims his own nonprofit, the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, was duped by the woman making accusations against Jones. Last week, Jones was portrayed on Detroit’s WXYZ-TV as a diva who reneged on a deal to make a Super Bowl weekend “empowerment” speech to a nonprofit that helps overweight girls. But as Page Six reported, public records show the charity’s director, Sharon DuMas-Pugh, has a history of financial troubles, including bankruptcy and failure to file tax returns.

“DuMas is the last person who should be claiming someone cheated her - because she’s been doing it to people for years,” Sheffield told The Post’s Jeane MacIntosh.

Sheffield says his group rented office space to DuMas’ charity, Full & Fabulous, only to see her skip out, leaving a bill of more than $10,000. “I wish I could tell you what I think of her and her charity, but I have to remind myself I’m a pastor,” Sheffield said. “But she’s just using these fragile, overweight girls as pawns to get something from Star Jones. It’s a joke.”

DuMas-Pugh claims her charity bought Jones first-class air tickets to come to Detroit for its empowerment event, but Jones did book signings and went to a fashion show instead. A copy of Full & Fabulous’ contract with the celeb shows the group agreed to pay Jones $25,000, plus first-class airfare and a five-star hotel for two in return for the appearance. But Jones didn’t get a $10,000 deposit due in August. She gave DuMas-Pugh until the night before the event to get the money and even flew to Detroit for the planned speech on her own dime. The money never materialized, and Jones didn’t show.

Sheffield, who also books celebrities such as Ashford & Simpson for Detroit charity events, says, “You know going in that you have to pay what you promised, and honor the contract, or folks are under no obligation to show up. Sharon knows that. She’s trying to create a scandal where there is none.”

DuMas-Pugh could not be reached.

(source)

Source: www.celebritymound.com

STAR Jones is being dissed in Detroit for not showing up at a 2006 Super Bowl weekend charity event - but the woman making the claim is a financial train wreck who never coughed up the dough to pay for the celebrity gig.

Bankrupt Motown businesswoman Sharon DuMas-Pugh, director of a nonprofit called Full & Fabulous, told Detroit TV station WXYZ this week that Jones promised to give an “empowerment” talk to overweight girls but blew it off. Instead, she claims, Jones used charity-supplied plane tickets to “come to town for book signings and a fashion show with Holly Robinson Peete - on our dime.”

But according to the event contract obtained by Page Six, DuMas-Pugh agreed back in April 2005 to pay Jones’ standard $25,000 speaking fee and pay for first-class airline tickets and a five-star hotel room. A $10,000 deposit was due that August. Just weeks before the Super Bowl, DuMas-Pugh still hadn’t come up with any money - and Jones agreed to extend the deadline.

“This was something I was really looking forward to doing, so I gave them as much time as I could, because I thought they were making an effort. But they clearly had breached the contract,” Jones told The Post’s Jeane MacIntosh.

DuMas-Pugh, who started her group 25 years ago, isn’t exactly a financial whiz. IRS records show that her charity, which solicits donations via its Web site, has never filed a tax return, though it’s required to by law.

And after running up $74,000 in debt, DuMas-Pugh declared personal bankruptcy in 2005. In the filing, she claimed to be “unemployed,” making just $3,500 a year as a “casual” consultant. Her charity co-director also has filed for personal bankruptcy.

In late January 2006, DuMas-Pugh, who was charging $100 a head for Jones’ keynote luncheon speech, finally came through with the deposit. Jones then gave the group until the day before the event to get the rest and boarded the plane for Detroit. But the money never materialized.
“So,” says Jones, “I did not show up. That part is the truth.”

Now DuMas-Pugh says she’s going after Jones for $20,000, and Jones says she’s hurt by what she calls an attempted “shakedown,” adding, “I am devastated that these young women were misled, [but] they were misled not by me but by their own director.”

(source)

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Justin, Christian, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Quincy

Al Reynolds and Star Jones

Tommy Lee

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Star Jones Reynolds says in a new interview that her dramatic weight-loss was due to gastric-bypass surgery, and that she dodged questions about it for years because she was “scared of what people might think of me.”

Reynolds, 45, says she was “intentionally evasive” when people asked how she’d dropped 160 pounds in three years. The former “View” co-host opens up about her weight loss and self-esteem issues in a story featured in the September issue of Glamour magazine, on newsstands Aug. 7.

“Everything about me was already so public (mostly my own doing - talk about dumb!), so of course everyone wanted to know what I had done,” she writes. “I was also terrified someone would have a tragic result after emulating me without making an informed decision with her doctor.”

“But the complete truth is, I was scared of what people might think of me,” she continues. “I was afraid to be vulnerable, and ashamed at not being able to get myself under control without this procedure.”

Keeping her decision private made her a hypocrite, she says, because she had been so outspoken about her firing from ABC’s “The View” last year.

Reynolds, who weighed 307 pounds at her heaviest, says her “out-of-control behavior” began around her 40th birthday in 2002. Feeling lonely, she turned to food for comfort and gained 75 pounds over the course of 17 months. She had the procedure in August 2003.

“I used to look in the mirror and take pride in my figure, but that was when I was legitimately a full-figured woman,” she says. “I’d gradually gone from full-figured to morbidly obese.”

Reynolds opted for surgery after a friend expressed concern about her weight. It was a success, she says, though she found she was “still consumed with the same anger, shame and insecurity as before.”

Her husband, banker Al Reynolds, encouraged her to begin psychological therapy in the summer of 2005. She learned, among other things, that she “couldn’t control what others thought,” she says. She began to heal by talking openly about her weight loss to strangers.

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Star Jones says gals who get into the TV industry are royally shafted. “Women still make 70-something cents to every man’s dollar, as if my bread somehow costs 30 cents less than his bread. That p - - - es me off,” she tells next month’s Marie Claire. “Donald Trump told me, ‘Star, they’d never have given you a hard time if you were a white guy.’ We have to live with who we are. We’ll always be thought of as the chick in the skirt.”

(source)

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Eva Longoria and Kevin Connolly

Karina Smirnoff and Mario Lopez

Katherine McPhee

Marcia Cross

Apolo Ohno

Cisco Adler

Michelle Rodriguez

Rumer Willis (Nice Member’s Only Jacket!!!)

Star Jones

Nicky Hilton and Paris Hilton

Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis

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Lindsay Lohan (right) and DJ Irie

Bo Derek and Star Jones

Denise Rich and Star Jones

Janet Jackson

Usher (right) and Tamika Foster

Tyra Banks

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Larry Birkhead with Priscilla Barnstable and Patricia Barnstable Brown

May Anderson and Kid Rock

Kym Johnson and Joey Fatone

Al Reynolds and Star Jones Reynolds

Cybill Shepherd

Gene Simmons

O. J. Simpson is a fan in the stands

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Matt Lauer and Meridith Vierira

Star Jones Reynolds and Debra L. Lee

Bryant Gumbel and Hillary Gumbel

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Go Emmitt, Go Emmitt!!!!!!! I love me some Emmitt - and not just because he was a Dallas Cowboy…….but…well….I do have a little bias!

Harry Hamlin & Vivica A. Fox

Cheryl Burke

Star Jones (It could be a tranny dressed as Star…who knows these days)

Source: www.celebritymound.com