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More from Hung Up this week: The Avengers of hating Drake and where is Commander Biden’s tell-all?

Jessica Chastain has opened Final Draft herself. Isla Fisher has cleared her schedule (and her home). Anne Hathaway is printing out a binder of stan tweets and Hung Up posts, already months into research for a role she hasn’t booked yet. Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos make eyes across the room: could this be her third Oscar? Christina Hendricks confiscates that Yellowstone lady’s phone. Reese Witherspoon deigned to go brunette for that one season of The Morning Show … she texts her colorist in case he has a shade of vermilion pre-mixed. Debra Messing is also somewhere clearing her throat loudly because even though she was the butt of every fourth Other Two joke, at least she was being talked about. Amy Adams is totally fine. Minding her business, even! Because, to borrow a phrase, Tree is back and she’s sleeping real good at night. Devoted Hung Up readers will recall that Amy Adams will win an Oscar for the Tree Paine biopic and not a moment before.

Taylor Swift’s publicist Tree Paine has been of particular fascination to Hung Up — and by Hung Up I mean very clearly me — for some time. Hyper-competent people both thrill and terrify me. Have you ever met an event producer with an iPad? Someone whose job requires them to wear a headset? You cannot cross those people. It’s not in your best interest. Tree Paine is like that: God save her, and God save me from her. (As your most annoying friend with a disastrous personal life will tell you: two things can be true at once.)

Allie Jones, the voice of a generation behind the newsletter Gossip Time and my favorite person to discuss Taylor Swift with, has a new write-around profile of Paine in The Wall Street Journal. (I’m quoted, lol.) “Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption,” Allie wrote. “Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore.” We met in a Google Doc to talk through every detail of her bombshell WSJ report.

Hunter: It is really hugely embarrassing to reveal this publicly, but when you told me you were reporting a write-around profile of Tree Paine, I confessed that one time I spent like a full 90 minutes trying to track down Tree Paine’s marriage license because I wanted to know what Tree was short for. You cracked the case!

Allie: I have to credit WSJ’s amazing research department — they helped me wade through a lot of public records to determine basic biographical information about our beloved Tree (she keeps things locked down!). And…her given name is Trina Snyder. I’m obsessed. She became Tree Paine when she married Lance Paine, onetime president of the Nashville-based candy company Goo Goo Cluster, in Vegas in 1998. I bet that was a fun party. 

Hunter: Tree Paine getting married in Vegas in 1998 … what a life she’s lived! 

I loved your story, obviously, and not only because you let me use “Painiac” as my descriptor. This detail in particular stopped me in my (31) tracks.  

Was I surprised to see that the quote actually was kind of good? A little! Usually emailed quotes never are. The no line breaks detail kind of shook me to my core. Were there any other moments in your reporting that shocked or intrigued you?

Allie: Yeah, that was amazing. Taylor Swift will not be edited! (Perhaps to her general detriment.) One of the other anecdotes that I think really illustrates how the Swift PR machine operates came from an unnamed writer who profiled another artist on one of Swift’s tours a few years ago. They told me that in order to do the interview, they had to go through Paine, who insisted that any information they discovered about Swift during the course of reporting would have to be off the record. That just goes to show you, anytime we see Swift out and about or learn some personal detail about her, it’s on purpose. Otherwise she’s, you know, hiding in a suitcase or something. 

Another detail I learned about Paine that made perfect sense: She was a USC sorority girl. (Pi Phi, to be exact.) As a former sorority social chair myself (I’m sorry), I have to imagine she honed many skills then that she still uses today (obfuscation, manipulation, management of unique personalities….)

Obviously, I did not get to talk to Paine for this story. I kind of doubt she’ll ever sit for an interview as long as she’s working for Swift. But I’m curious, if you ever got five minutes with her, what would you ask? 

Hunter: Oh God, I mean, I’m sure Tree Paine knows why Sandra Oh and Alexander Payne got a divorce. She knows what Quincy Jones was talking about when he said he knew who killed Kennedy. She knows what Tokyo Toni meant when she said “Well what I mean by this is Hillary Clinton i wouldn't want to be in her shoes after this.” She knows if I’m going to make a flight to Chicago I have a week from now. She knows it all.

There’s the temptation to simply ask point blank what happened between Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss. In a similar vein, I want to know what the deal is with Olivia Rodrigo, because I believe there is more tension there than either side is letting on. I’m also curious why they’ve let the Joe Alwyn rumors go on for so long (and did the whole-squad-unfollowing-him-thing) when according to what I’m hearing on Tortured Poets their breakup was utterly conventional. 

If I felt like I’d get an honest answer (I wouldn’t) I’d want to know the hardest part of Taylor to manage. It can’t be easy managing someone who releases double the amount of music than literally anyone else, and when they bring home Matty Healy and want you to sell that relationship? I mean, my God. “Her taste in men,” is a good enough answer. “Tell me about a mistake you made” would also work, I think. What about you?

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Allie: I would also love to know the answer to all of these, especially the Rodrigo question — I agree, it seems like there is more going on there (though up until this point Swift has wisely avoided publicly punching down). The other thing that became apparent while reporting this story is that Swift’s feud with Kim Kardashian is so far from over. It would be great to know if there’s something we’re missing, because…why? I’d especially be interested to hear what Paine thinks when she gets a rough cut of a track like “thanK you aIMee.” Help? 

Hunter: Exactly! That was part of my issue with that way-too-fawning Time Person of the Year profile: How is Kanye still getting so much ire from her, all these years later, and when she clearly won. (Scooter Braun owns the masters where she doesn’t sound like a billionaire, and in return she, um, only wrecked his marriage. Though if “Vigilante Shit” is to be believed, he did the heavy lifting on that one himself.) I texted this to you and I also sent it in the chat, but re: “thanK you aIMee” it’s objectively hilarious that she’s cast herself as the sweet nerd who gets into Harvard and takes off her glasses and becomes a girlboss and casts Kim as the cheerleader who gets pregnant a year too early and is living in basically a Tom Perrotta novel of suburban malaise. This is not even two incredibly rich women fighting. This is one incredibly rich woman fighting, and the other just kind of minding her business.

I’ve had a theory since the back-to-back Grammys sweep and Super Bowl that Tree Paine’s master plan would be that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, the new album (good or bad) was overexposure, and Taylor Swift would be hated again just in time for the re-release of her best album “Reputation.” That’s a key she works best in. But the wrinkle there is that who benefits from “Reputation” being even more critically acclaimed than it already is? And Matty Healy was an express train to disappointing her fans and setting that up. So I don’t know where this album leaves us really! It is very Drake of her, so much music that does not amount to much more than you’re probably going to like it just because I gave it to you. I haven’t listened to all of it yet, but I haven’t heard anything that has really felt essential. You can hear the Joe Alwyn songs, and how they’re better than the Matty Healy songs.

I have never wondered this while profiling someone, but we’re talking about Tree after all. Has she read your story? Where did she read it? On her phone or a tablet? Where was she sitting? What did she think? 

Allie: I can confirm that the link has been emailed to her. But has she read it? My guess is that she gave it a 15-second scan and moved on with her day (she IS a little busy right now, LOL). Perhaps the bigger question in that vein: Where was CHARLIE PUTH when he heard the album’s title track? And is he still breathing? 

Hunter: I’m not convinced that Tree is not in this Google Doc with us right now. It would also not surprise me if she hasn’t read it but everyone quoted is on her watchlist forever. (Very cunt, big slay, would be my honor.) 

The Charles Otto Puth lyric … starting an album with a song that name-checks Charlie Puth very much indicates a wellness check. (And also where was she during Voice Notes, when I was a brat until “Empty Cups” played at every party I went to.) 

I’m assuming this is a conversation Swift was having with Matty; I don’t think Travis Kelce or Joe Alwyn knows who Charlie Puth is. I must know, however, what Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez think about that line. Maybe Selena Gomez will get on Instagram and tell us. :)

More from Gossip Time and Hung Up:

The Taylor Swift Manicure That Has Unsettled My Spirit

READ AND SUBSCRIBE TO GOSSIP TIME HERE!

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