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Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: The security detail for the Giants quarterback wouldn't let Sarah Michelle Gellar meet him before they taped Letterman, Russell Brand doesn't want Katy Perry's millions of dollars, and sorting out the meaning of Robert Downey, Jr.'s baby's name.
Eli Manning has been a two-time Super Bowl champion for more than 50 hours now, and it's kind of turning him into a heel. Backstage Monday night before a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman, Manning's fellow guest Sarah Michelle Gellar asked if she could met the QB before they went on. No dice, his security detail told her. The snub only got more egregious when Gellar revealed to Letterman her family had "season tickets [at Giants Stadium] when I was a kid. I used to sit out there and freeze on the 50 yard line." Gellar tried to laugh the whole thing off, admitting "It was weird... I think that's where I went wrong. [saying] 'I just want an autograph and a lock of his hair!'" Ah, the lock of hair gag: the go-to response for celebrities who have just been ignored by another, more famous celebrity and want to pass it off as no big deal. Except this is a big deal. Where is the Eli Manning we love, the kid with the magic arm who Michael Lewis once called his best friend and spent a quarter-of-an-hour trying to figure out the song from Teen Wolf, and who, win or lose, seemed adorably confused by the game of football, despite being increasingly good at it? He didn't even throw Gellar a bone on the show itself. He was much too busy telling America it takes a selfless team effort to win a Super Bowl -- which everyone in The Atlantic Wire bullpen already knows, because we're Redskins, Bills and Lions fans. Maybe he was just caught up in the excitement, but the old Eli would have brought Gellar aside after taping and given her a roundabout compliment about how she was such a better Buffy than Kristy Swanson. [Page Six]