'Bald-headed actor': Variety's Patrick Stewart tribute was so bad readers think a chatbot wrote it
Hollywood's trade paper of record opened its obituary of a knighted Shakespearean with his hairline, edited it without a word, and left the original running in its Australian edition.
Patrick Stewart died on October 28 at his home in Los Angeles, at 86. Variety's obituary, bylined to Carmel Dagan, introduced him to readers as "the bald-headed English actor with impressive stage and film credits" who "will nevertheless be remembered most for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard" and Professor Charles Xavier.
Screenshots spread across X and Threads. Variety then quietly edited the phrase out of its main site, with no editor's note and no statement. As of October 30, the Australian edition still opens with the original line.
"the bald-headed English actor with impressive stage and film credits"
— Variety's obituary of Patrick Stewart, original version
Why readers blamed a machine
The accusation that took off was that nobody wrote this at all, and the tell people pointed to was "nevertheless." It's easy to see why: the sentence reads exactly like a chatbot filling in a template, with a physical descriptor, a vague nod to credits, and then the famous roles.
That's Variety's real problem, whoever typed it. Hollywood's paper of record is publishing copy its own readers can't tell apart from machine output, and it's those readers, not Variety's editors, who keep catching it.
The logic of the sentence doesn't help either. "Impressive stage and film credits" that he "will nevertheless be remembered" past is a backhanded way to describe a man who spent two decades at the Royal Shakespeare Company, won Olivier Awards, and then made Captain Picard a household name. The sentence treats Star Trek as the thing he'll be remembered for in spite of himself.
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The same week, the same paper
Stewart's obituary was the second Variety embarrassment in four days:
- October 26: Variety posted a story on Brazil's election under the headline "Lula's Election Win: How Taylor's Swift's Advice to Fandom Helped Him to a Historic Victory and Defeat for Trump," typo included. Trump wasn't on the ballot, and the story itself credited a Billie Eilish fan account with starting the movement.
- Later: The headline on the site became "How Fan Accounts for Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and More Helped Him to a Historic Victory and Defeat for Trump."
- October 29–30: The Stewart obituary, edited the same quiet way.
In both cases, readers spotted the problem in public before the story changed.
Variety's Brazil headline credited Taylor Swift with defeating a politician who wasn't on the ballot.
What's at stake
Trade papers live on one asset: when Variety says a deal closed or an actor died, the industry treats it as settled. That trust rests on the assumption that someone reads everything before it runs. If the first line of Patrick Stewart's obituary got past Variety's editors, readers have every reason to wonder what else is getting through.
Variety had not addressed the Stewart backlash as of October 30. The Australian version of the obituary still opens with the line.
Previously we wrote: I rolled my eyes at the Wicked press tour too. Cynthia Erivo's answer made me rethink it