Cattrall Swipes at Gossip Press; Muppet Mansion Now Murdoch's?

Also In today's Smart Set: Bruce Springsteen's letter-to-the-editor writer

Page Six gets an earful from Kim Cattrall, we get an update on the Muppet Mansion, Architectural Digest gets an unexpected scoop, and a small New Jersey newspaper gets a letter from a very big name, today in the Smart Set.

• A gossip reporter's job entails asking a lot of impertinent questions at famous people who would rather be talking about their latest book/diet/movie/singing career. So inevitably you get exchanges like the one between former Sex in the City star Kim Cattrall and a Page Six reporter. Instead of asking about her role in the new movie Meet Monica Velour, the unnamed reporter asked about a tip involving a bikini wax. Cattrall responded with career advice saying the gossip press will "chew you up and spit you out," she told the Post's reporter, before imploring the reporter to get a "respectable job." The glee was apparent through the ink as Page Six recounted Cattral's follow-up: " 'Why don't you work at -- what's that news agency -- Roybers?' When we corrected her, 'Reuters,' she conceded, 'Yeah, sorry, I've been drinking.'" The upside of celebrity abuse? It makes for a better item. [Page Six]
• New information has surfaced about the possible new owner of the so-called Muppet Mansion, mentioned here on Monday. The $25 milloon buyer is not editor of The Daily, Jesse Angelo, but News Corp. has announced that Rupert Murdoch's son James is moving to New York to step into a leadership role at the company, and he'll need a place to live. The Observer figured out that Rupert Murdoch's assistant is named in the sale, so they're going with speculation that the house is going to James, or the Murdoch family in one way or another. [NY Observer]
• Did disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair take up a new career as a television hunk? No, but you'd be forgiven for thinking so. Gatecrasher notices that a cast member of the teen comedy shares the reporter's uniquely spelled name. The one-time journalist Blair has taken on a career as a life coach while the actor plays a jock, so there's some small synchronicity there. [Gatecrasher]
• One of the last media outlets to interact with Elizabeth Taylor was, unexpectedly, Architectural Digest. The magazine shot Taylor's Bel Air mansion for a feature just a few days before she died, but the star had already been moved to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. The publication is tight-lipped about the shoot saying it's against policy to talk about stories "that may or may not be published in the magazine." [NY Post]
• In other Elizabeth Taylor news, her first husband, Bill Pawley, told Inside Edition that Taylor was the one who broke off the marriage, under pressure from her studio. "I still haven't gotten over her," the 90-year-old Pawley said. [Reliable Source]
• The Asbury Park Press newspaper received a letter recently from that town's most famous resident, Bruce Springsteen, who still considers the publication his hometown paper. After reading a March 27 article on anti-poverty groups struggling in the face of Gov. Chris Christie's proposed tax cuts, Springsteen wrote in: "the article shows that the cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty." He probably made some editor's day. [NY Post]