An Australian woman has revealed she accidentally spent $10,000 on Taylor Swift tickets ahead of the superstar’s Eras Tour.
When tickets went on sale this week, millions of fans battled to score one of the 630,000 tickets released, setting a new national record for online demand.
TikToker Georgia Rose logged on on Monday for the American Express VIP package pre-sale, which ranged in price from $349.90 to $1249.90.
The dedicated Swiftie was hoping to get her and her sister the most expensive package, which includes a reserved seated floor ticket, special merchandise, and perks such as priority check-in and early venue entry.
But she made one crucial error which saw her dad’s credit card charged $10,000.
“I am a moron,” she said in a TikTok video.
She explained that her desperation for tickets combined with the chaos of the morning meant she didn’t realise how many tickets she had in her basket when she went to pay.
“If you tried for tickets or got tickets in the AMEX presale you know that it was a crazy morning,” Ms Rose said.
“The site crashed, AMEX released a separate link, but only on Facebook and Twitter, and like just before the tickets were going on sale at 10am.”
The fan said the process was so stressful that she was “literally shaking”, having descended into “full drama queen vibes”.
“I had four windows open, I was not expecting to get tickets in any of them,” she said.
“It hits 10am, nothing’s happening, it was literally just that cursed Ticketek lounge ticking over and over and over.”
The Ticketek lounge is a digital waiting room potential purchasers must stay in before they are able to buy available tickets.
“10.04am comes around and tickets ended up showing up in all of them so I was assessing my tickets and the Ticketek timer is counting down,” she said.
“It gets to two minutes, I’m like okay, I’m going to go with those tickets, (closed) all the other windows.
“At this point I’m not signed into Ticketek, I’ve crossed out of all the windows that I don’t want the tickets from.”
Ms Rose said she was only looking to purchase two tickets, which is what she thought was in her cart.
She was wrong.
“So I go through the next steps, write in the CVV number, and then click check out and as the wheel is spinning to process the order I look in the background and it says $10,000,” she said.
“I froze, my heart literally stopped.
“Next minute I’m hyperventilating, literally sobbing, (and) my dad messages me and says, ‘Hey, did you get in through the lounge, um, someone charged $10,000 to Ticketek on the AMEX account’.”
She had accidentally bought eight VIP packages as she had been looking for tickets in Sydney and Melbourne.
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She said she has since been banned from having an Amex card.
In the end Ms Rose was able to sell the additional tickets to friends and family members who missed out in the presale.
“Now we have amazing tickets right on the diamond,” she said of the ordeal.
The pop superstar’s Australian leg of her tour will begin on February 16 and run to February 26.
She will perform her almost three-hour set at Sydney’s Accord Stadium and Melbourne’s MCG to thousands of screaming fans.
The first time Russell and Rhys met was in 2002, when he "very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single slip of a thing".
Russell turned him down and the actors didn't cross paths again until 2012, when they started work on The Americans together – but Russell didn't remember Rhys at all.
In fact, it wasn't until they'd done multiple readings and "a heavy dose of fight training" that Rhys reminded Russell that they'd met before.
"I said, 'No, we haven't.' You said, 'Yeah, 10 years ago at a kickball party'," she said to Rhys during a joint appearance years later.
"As soon as you said that, I went, 'Of course I remember that!'"
At the time, Russell was married to Brooklyn-based contractor Shane Deary and shared two children with him, a son born in 2007 and a daughter born in 2011.
The pair had been married since 2007 and seemed happy, so it came as a bit of a shock when they separated in early 2013, just a few months after The Americans premiered.
There didn't seem to be any connection between Russell's separation and her friendship with co-star Rhys at first, but not long after the news was confirmed the pair sparked dating rumours.
They were spotted hanging out together off-camera and seemed to be growing closer, though both stars denied there was anything romantic about their relationship.
"They were laughing and walking closely together," a source told People after spotting the pair on what looked like a date in 2013, adding that they "looked very much like a couple".
Russell and Rhys only fanned the flames when they appeared in an intimate GQ photoshoot in January 2014, in which she straddled him in one particularly saucy shot.
The infamous sex scene where the director realised they were together was filmed around the same time, though Russell didn't reveal what happened until years later.
"We had to do a very explicit scene together... and [the director] was like 'well this might be kind of awkward and see how this goes,'" Russell said during a TV interview.
"We kind of did it and just did it right away. And he told the script supervisor 'these two have definitely f--ked. He's like 'they're way too comfortable together'."
At the time, she and Rhys hadn't made their relationship public and most of the cast and crew of The Americans didn't even know they were seeing each other.
Fortunately the director kept their secret to himself until Russell and Rhys finally confirmed their romance in April 2014.
They later confessed they did, in fact, fall in love on the set of The Americans and in 2016 they welcomed their first child together, a son they named Sam.
"We had a boy," Russell told the hosts of the US Today show a few months after his birth. "[His name is] Sam. He's so good. He's big and fat and nice."
The pair took to parenting well and though the TV show that brought them together, The Americans, ended in 2018, their romance only grew stronger.
"If you propose to me, I'll punch you clean in the mouth."
You'd think dating your co-star would make it easier to play a married couple on-screen, but as the show drew to an end Rhys said the opposite was true for him.
"My acting was worse. I was trying to impress her so much I wasn't doing anything," he quipped in a 2018 interview with Esquire.
"That's why we didn't get nominated for Emmys in seasons one, two, and three. Damn you, Keri Russell!"
Fortunately, Russell didn't mind and said in an interview of her own that she did and always would respect his work on the show.
In September that year, Rhys credited her as his biggest supporter while accepting an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
"To the woman who truly got me this award, who just stands in front of me every day and just puts up with me," he said.
Another winner had proposed during his acceptance speech earlier in the night, but if any fans were hoping for Rhys to get down on one knee, they were disappointed.
"She said, 'If you propose to me, I'll punch you clean in the mouth,'" Rhys joked of Russell during his own speech.
"I don't have the words, or the time, neither which would do you justice, Keri Lynn, except thank you."
In recent years, the pair have enjoyed a more private family life with their son, who speaks English as well as Rhys' native Welsh.
Russell and Rhys shared the big screen for the first time in 2023, when both appeared in the thriller Cocaine Bear, though Rhys only makes a short cameo.
Another actor had originally been cast in the role, but when Rhys heard that his partner would be starring in the film directed by Elizabeth Banks, he wanted in on it.
"I unashamedly jumped on my partner's coattails... I read the script, and I simply said, 'Who's playing that? That little fun part, a few seconds in the beginning?'" he told The A.V. Club.
"[Keri] goes, 'I don't know.' I said, 'Ask Banks.'"
His nagging paid off, because Russell eventually approached Banks with the request and she agreed to give the role to Rhys.
Both actors tend to stay out of the headlines these days, instead focusing on their work and their blended family, which includes Russell's two children from her marriage to Deary.
It's been almost 10 years since they took their behind-the-scenes romance public and looking back, Rhys himself admits it could have been a disaster.
"We were both at an age where we've done it long enough to go, 'You know workplace [romances] can be disastrous," he told Page Six recently.
"So, I think it was approached with caution and a great deal of trepidation, and coupled with that, for me, was certainly fun and excitement. Thank God it worked!"
So how have they made their romance last this long?
According to Rhys, red wine is the secret to a happy relationship.
"The great leveller, the great equaliser. Everything is so much better after a good, solid half-bottle of red wine!" he quipped to People, before giving his love some credit too.
"She has the patience of a saint, so that helps. That is basically it."
Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey got a thrill preying on other men and escalated his behavior from touchy-feely advances to hostile fondling and worse, a prosecutor told jurors on Friday during Spacey's sexual assault trial in London.
Spacey is "a man who does not respect personal boundaries or space, a man who it would seem delights in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable — a sexual bully," prosecutor Christine Agnew said in her opening statement.
"His preferred method of assault is, it appears, to grab aggressively other men in the crotch."
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges involving four men and allegations that date from 2001 to 2013, when he worked at London's Old Vic Theatre. The charges include sexual assault, indecent assault and causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
The stakes for the American actor are high. A conviction could send him to prison, while an acquittal could allow for a career comeback.
Defense lawyer Patrick Gibbs said Spacey denied all allegations of nonconsensual activity and told jurors to ask themselves as they listened to the evidence what — if anything — had occurred when he was with the men.
He suggested the alleged victims had other motives and said that Spacey had left himself open to opportunists when he came out as gay in 2020.
"What has been reimagined with a sinister spin?" Gibbs said. "What has been made up or twisted and why and when because all of these allegations happened a long time ago."
He said jurors would hear truths, half-truths, deliberate exaggerations and "many damned lies."
Spacey, wearing spectacles and dressed in a light gray suit, white shirt and gold tie, leaned forward behind a window in the dock, listening intently as his lawyer provided a brief overview of the case. Gibbs will present a longer opening statement after the prosecution rests its case.
The actor served as the Old Vic Theatre's artistic director from 2003 until 2015. The four men who have accused Spacey of sexual assault, now in their 30s or 40s, did not know each other, but all "had the misfortune to attract" his attention, Agnew said.
One victim said he was frequently groped against his wishes by Spacey in the early 2000s, culminating with a day when he was driving and the actor, who had been drinking, grabbed his privates so hard it took his breath away and he nearly ran off the road. He told Spacey to never do that again.
Spacey "laughed and commented that his getting angry simply turned him on," Agnew said.
Spacey narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as Agnew spoke, occasionally jotting notes with a pencil on the pages of a large black binder he carried into court.
During questioning by police last year, Spacey said he was "baffled and deeply hurt" by those allegations from someone he considered a friend. He said the events had been reimagined into lies.
Agnew said Spacey seemed to be confident the men wouldn't tell anyone — that the word of a celebrity would be more believable than from someone who wasn't famous.
"None of the men wanted to be touched by Kevin Spacey ... in a sexual way, but he doesn't seem to have cared very much for their feelings," the prosecutor said.
"He did what he wanted to do for his own personal sexual gratification."
Another man who said Spacey groped him at a charity event in 2005 only told one friend about it until speaking with police in 2017.
"Kevin Spacey ... was a star, a golden boy as he put it," Agnew said about the man.
"He wasn't sure he would be believed, and even if he had been, he didn't think that he would receive any support."
In his statement to police, Spacey said he hadn't done anything without consent. He said it was "entirely possible and indeed likely" he had made a "clumsy pass" but denied grabbing anyone's crotch. He suggested some of the men were seeking financial gain.
An aspiring actor who said he reached out to Spacey for career advice ended up at his London apartment drinking beer and smoking marijuana in 2008. He either fell asleep or passed out on the sofa and when he awoke, Spacey was performing oral sex on him, Agnew said.
The man, who was in his early 20s, said Spacey told him not to tell anyone what had happened and not to mention he had been in Spacey's apartment. The man said he was in shock as Spacey held the door open for him to leave, and that he then walked to a bus stop where he sat down and cried.
He decided to speak with police in 2017 after reading about allegations against Spacey in the US, Agnew said.
Spacey's career was derailed when sexual misconduct allegations against him arose as the #MeToo movement exploded.
He was written off the Netflix political thriller House of Cards, where he played lead character Frank Underwood, a ruthless and corrupt congressman who becomes president. He was cut from the completed film All the Money in the World, with the scenes getting reshot with Christopher Plummer.
A jury of nine men and five women, including two alternates, will decide his fate during the four-week trial in Southwark Crown Court, where he is identified by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler. The actor, who has homes in London and the US, is free on bail.
Spacey became one of the most celebrated actors of his generation in the 1990s, starring in films including Glengarry Glen Ross and LA Confidential.
He has earned multiple prominent acting awards for the theater, the silver screen and television. He won an Academy Award for supporting actor in The Usual Suspects in 1995 and best actor Oscar for the 1999 movie American Beauty.
Spacey recently had his first film role in several years, appearing in 2022 in Italian director Franco Nero's The Man Who Drew God, and playing the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman in the biopic Once Upon a Time in Croatia. He also stars in the unreleased US film Peter Five Eight.
He has suggested he would be in demand if he is acquitted.
"There are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges," Spacey said in an interview published this month in Germany's Zeit magazine.
Agnew told jurors they would have to evaluate the credibility of the victims and decide if they were telling the truth or manufacturing allegations for profit.
"The prosecution suggest that Mr. Spacey ... abused the power and influence that his reputation and fame afforded him," Agnew said.
"Taking what and who he wanted, when he wanted."
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Barbie star Margot Robbie suffered an awkward fail on The Project on Thursday night when she momentarily forget what 'barbie' means in Australia.
The 32-year-old actress is currently in Australia promoting the film, which is set for release on July 20, and was surprised when The Project co-host Sam Taunton asked the film's director Greta Gerwig if Margot had told her what 'barbie' means to Aussies.
"[Barbie] does mean so much to so many people," he began. "I'm not sure if Margot filled you in on this Greta, but the word 'barbie' means something else in Australia. Did you brief Greta about this?"
"What does it mean here?" the Queensland-born star questioned, seemingly confused.
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"Like a barbecue," Sam responded, also looking confused, with Margot quickly realising her mistake, leaving the desk in hysterics.
"I was like, 'Oh God, we've lost her!'" co-host Georgie Tunny said.
"I'm so Barbie now I can't even..." Margot said through laughter, looking sheepish. "A barbie, yeah... having a barbie."
"I'm blaming the jet lag by the way, don't blame the blonde hair, blame the jet lag," the actress added.
Sam joked that he thought it would have been the perfect Aussie promotion to have Barbie with a barbecue.
"I'm deeply regretting that there's not now that you mention it, wasted opportunity!" Margot responded. "I'm really annoyed we didn't do something like this!"
Margot reveals secret behind THAT Barbie scene
During the episode, Margot and Greta also revealed how they pulled off the iconic scene from the film that fans have seen in the trailer, where Barbie steps out of her shoes and her feet are perfectly arched like the doll.
Georgie asked whether it was actually Margot in the scene and whether or not there were special effects.
"Yes, it is me, no, it's no special effects, you'd be amazed how few VFX there are in this film actually," Margot explained. "We didn't do that many takes of it, and I kind held on to a bar so I was steady once I stepped [out], we just put double sided tape on the floor so my shoes would stay still. I did have a pedicure that morning..."
Greta added that Margot "has the nicest feet" so they didn't want to CGI anything.
Baby bombshell: Top Aussie model in paternity claim Daily Telegraph
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMirwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5kYWlseXRlbGVncmFwaC5jb20uYXUvZW50ZXJ0YWlubWVudC9jb3N0YS1yaWNhbi1tb2RlbHMtYmFieS1ib21ic2hlbGwtamFycm9kLXNjb3R0LWRvZXNudC1oYXZlLW9uZS1iYWJ5LWdpcmwtaGUtaGFzLXR3by9uZXdzLXN0b3J5LzY4NmZkMjBmYjM2YmUzMzIwZmYxNzQ2NGVkYmYwZGIz0gEA?oc=5
"Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care. A full recovery is expected," Oseary continued.
"At this time we need to pause all commitments, which includes the tour," he added. "We will share more details with you as soon as we have them, including a new start date for the tour in for rescheduled shows."
Madonna's next tour, titled the Celebration tour, was scheduled to kick off July 15 in Vancouver, Canada, followed by two dates in Seattle starting on July 18. The tour was set to continue throughout the United States and Canada through early October, before heading to Europe.
Madonna also added supplemental dates in the US in December and January, followed by four show dates in Mexico City.
Presale tickets for Taylor Swift's Eras tour in Australia have been sold out.
Four million people were in virtual queue to buy the tickets, according to Ticketek.
The ticketing site claimed it expelled half a billion bots from gaming its system.
Ticketek has stopped half a billion bots from gaming the system as four million people tried their luck securing tickets to the Australian leg of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour.
Presale tickets for the three Sydney shows sold out at 2pm on Wednesday while presale seats for the two Melbourne shows were gone just after 4pm, a Ticketek spokesman confirmed.
More than half a billion bots were also repelled from the ticketing site, Ticketek claimed.
Her fans were trying a range of strategies to win a booking.
Antonia Touma's dining table was laden with six different devices, each fully charged and placed in the queue for tickets since 6am on Wednesday.
"We started planning it all yesterday. We had group chats, texting when we need to do this, what needs to be done, whose laptops we're using, what devices we connected," she said.
"Six devices ups our chances, we have to stay hopeful."
Fellow Swiftie Amite Skinner was also caught up in the search for tickets.
Her sister, brother-in-law and nephew were all caught in hours-long virtual ticket queues for the $900-a-seat VIP package.
"I have always loved Taylor Swift. She has only been here once before and I sadly missed out,'' she said.
"The experience this morning has been super stressful. I feel absolutely exhausted and deflated so far. It'll all change if I end up getting tickets."
For Ms Skinner, the waiting game paid off, securing four tickets just after midday.
Swift will perform two shows in Melbourne and three in Sydney during February.
Unprecedented demand for tickets led Victoria to declare Swift's concerts as major events on Tuesday, in an effort to limit ticket scalping, a move quickly followed in NSW.
Victorian Tourism, Sport and Major Events Minister Steve Dimopoulos confirmed tickets bought and resold before the declaration were not covered by the state's anti-scalping rules.
"But that was only a small number," he told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Wednesday.
Swift announced last week she was bringing her tour to Australia, but Mr Dimopoulos insisted the Victorian government had acted quickly to guard against ticket gouging and had to follow a process.
The Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticketek ticket queuing page. Source: AAP / Rounak Amini
"We worked with the promoter, so Frontier in this case, and to be honest we did it as soon as they asked," he said.
The arrival of Swift isn't an invitation for ticket scalpers to go wild, the NSW treasurer said.
"The reality is Taylor Swift's coming to Sydney is fantastic for NSW, many people are currently trying to get tickets, a lot of them won't do that, we hope they shake it off," Daniel Mookhey told reporters.
For those fans who missed out on pre-sale tickets, general sales open to the public on Friday.
Presale tickets for the Sydney and Melbourne shows of Taylor Swift tour have sold out after an internet frenzy, with fans breaking a national record for the number of people waiting in an online queue.
Ticketek confirmed to 9news.com.au that pre-sale tickets for the hotly anticipated Eras tour in Sydney and Melbourne have sold out.
It's also believed the eager fans broke a Ticketek record for the number of people waiting in an online queue for tickets after four million Aussies attempted to access the sale site today.
Sydney fans exhaust allocation within three hours
Some fans woke at the crack of dawn to jump online to the Ticketek website and jump into the online queue but it was no guarantee for a pre-sale ticket.
At 1.30pm AEST the allocation of presale tickets for the three Sydney shows was exhausted after the online gates opened at 10am.
Ticketek had updated fans an hour after the Sydney sale began, advising them that tickets were selling fast.
"Some price categories are close to selling out, we recommend trying other price categories," Ticketek said in a tweet shared at 11.05am.
9news.com.au understands around 800,000 people were already waiting on the website in the "lounge" or waiting area, half an hour before the presale for Sydney shows began at 10am.
The capacity for the three Sydney shows at Accor Stadium is around 250,000.
Melbourne pre-sale tickets sell out just as fast
Melburnians had a different timeline with presale tickets opening at 2pm AEST but the allocation for the two shows was exhausted by 4.20pm.
Similarly to Sydney, around 800,000 people are estimated to have logged on ahead of the Melbourne sale.
Some disappointed Sydney fans also reportedly tried their luck with the Melbourne shows.
The capacity for the two Melbourne shows at the MCG will fit 200,000 fans.
Fans likely to miss out on coveted tickets
With just 450,000 tickets available for the five shows across Sydney and Melbourne, many eager fans will likely miss out given today's record-breaking pre-sale online queues.
Today was a flurry of emotions for the pop star's devoted fans as some scored the coveted tickets and others remained empty-handed.
Ticketek stated that "demand for tickets will be far greater than what is available".
But it isn't all over for Swift fans.
Those eager to get their hands on tickets still have a chance to try their luck on Friday when general public tickets go on sale.
It remains unclear how many tickets remain.
Australian cities leap up rankings of world's most liveable
Despite earlier concerns about the website's stability, the Ticketek website appeared to hold up under the massive influx of traffic for both Melbourne and Sydney tickets.
A Ticketek spokesperson said over half a billion bot accounts attempted to buy tickets and were successfully repelled from the system.
After the chaotic start to the AMEX presale, Ticketek Australia said: "Our systems are designed to manage these high-demand events.
"We do this every day, we're prepared."
Aside from some isolated incidents of the Ticketek app crashing, most fan frustrations were directed at the queuing system, which gatekept access for the tickets.
Ticketek and Frontier Touring shared their general tips for securing tickets, which included creating an account in advance, having presale codes ready and not closing or refreshing the browser while waiting.
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Jennifer Lawrence has dismissed rumours she hooked up with Liam Hemsworth when he was with Miley Cyrus.
The 32-year-old actress has responded to wild speculation she had an affair with her former Hunger Games co-star before his split from the Flowers hitmaker.
Appearing on Watch What Happens Live, Jennifer played the Plead The Fifth game with host Andy Cohen and replied: “Not true.”
The presenter had said Miley’s song prompted chatter that the music video referenced a secret fling between the two.
In the Flowers promo, Miley struts around Hollywood Hills in a gold dress taken from Saint Laurent’s autumn/winter 1991 collection.
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Some fans pointed out a resemblance between that gown and the gold Prabal Gurung dress Jennifer wore at The Hunger Games premiered with Liam in 2012.
Regarding the conspiracy theory, the actress added: “Total rumour.”
“We all know we only kissed once, and it was years after they broke up, so I just assumed that was a coincidence.”
Back in 2015, she appeared on the same show and admitted she kissed Liam, 33, off camera, but it was after his split from the 30-year-old pop star.
She laughed: “Liam and I grew up together. Liam’s really hot. What would you have done?”
Miley has never publicly called out Jennifer over any potential rumours.
The actress has admitted she does get tempted to respond online when she reads lies about herself on the internet, but she doesn’t have her own Instagram or Twitter accounts.
She explained: “If five people at a party think you slept with somebody’s boyfriend, it’s really upsetting.
“And then you multiply it by, I’m not good at math, eight billion.”
It’s been widely speculated that some of Miley’s recent music references her relationship with Liam.
But according to an insider, she doesn’t want to “bash” her ex-husband, as a source said: “She’s not trying to bash Liam, but she feels like she has every right to own the narrative after everyone was picking her apart after the breakup.”