'Queen Bee' Julie Chen; Kutcher's Beastly $2 Million Trailer

Plus: Joe Biden gets in a pre-China round of a golf in Bridgehampton

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Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: Julie Chen's causing an exodus from The Talk, Ashton Kutcher's trailer is highly luxurious, and the Bidens return to Bridgehampton

  • Julie Chen's "queen bee" attitude on the set of The Talk has her co-hosts dropping like flies. Sharon Osbourne announced back in July she was taking leave from the CBS daytime chat show show, Holly Robinson Peete said last week she would not be returning, and Leah Rimini reportedly "plans to quit" the year-old program. For Osbourne and Remini, "the last straw" came when Chen's husband, CBS president Les Moonves, informed the cast that they "were not allowed to discuss the Casey Anthony case without [Chen] because she’s the only host with journalistic credentials." [Page Six]
  • Ashton Kutcher's trailer on the set of Two and a Half Men is fit for a king, or at least the fantasy football playing, easygoing billionaire he's going to be playing on the CBS sitcom. The 1,000-square-foot trailer from Andderson Mobile Estates, seen below, includes "two bathrooms, a kitchen with granite counter tops, a wireless touch screen that controls heat, air conditioning, brightness and the blinds, and a conference area...[and] seven 60-inch 3-D plasma TV," along with "side sections and a second floor that hydraulically emerges from the main body of the vehicle." The going price for one of these behemoths is $2 million, equal to about three of Kutcher's weekly paychecks on his new show. [E! Online]

  • Vice President Joe Biden was spotted "laughing and having a great time" at the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton last weekend before his trip to China Tuesday. Once again, they stayed with "tech entrepreneur David Bohnett and partner Tom Gregory at their fancy First Neck Lane estate," who also hosted the Bidens when they came to the Hamptons over Memorial Day weekend. [Page Six]
  • Jay-Z threw a party for "Watch the Throne" at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami and sprang for a "$100,000, 15-liter bottle of Ace of Spades Champagne," source say. According to one witness, "It takes two people to serve the Champagne due to the size and weight of the bottle." According to the handy conversion chart we found at ChampagneMagic.com, a 15-liter bottle is called a "Nebuchadnezzar", and is the equivalent of 20 "regular" bottles. [Page Six]
  • When Cher first met Justin Bieber, she didn't know who the tween Canadian heartthrob was. She told attendees at a Sunday party thrown by producer Jennifer Klein that after meeting Bieber for the first time, she turned to friends and asked "if he was in show business." [Gatecrasher]
  • Monica Goodling, the former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who was ousted in 2007 in the wake of allegations of a politicized plot to fire federal prosecutors, gave birth to a baby boy last night. As The Reliable Source notes, Goodling has a knack for chasing bad news with good...those front page stories prompted an old boyfriend to call, and several months later, she and [Michael] Krempasky (founding RedState blogger, now with Edelman PR) were engaged." This is the couple's first child. [The Reliable Source]
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.