The Queen Elizabeth Death Conspiracy Theory Gets Even More Bizarre
As far as Buckingham Palace — and the public — is concerned, Queen Elizabeth is still very much alive, despite her recent COVID-19 diagnosis. But Jason Lee, the founder of tabloid site Hollywood Unlocked, is confident she already passed.
On February 22, the outlet broke a story that the queen died. They said that they confirmed the news from "sources close to the royal kingdom." They also claimed that the queen was initially supposed to attend the wedding of British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, but had been found dead. While the palace has yet to debunk this ridiculous rumor, a member of the parliament already assured the public that the queen is alive. Lee, however, doubled down on what his site had published. "We don't post lies and I always stand by my sources," he said. "Waiting for an official statement from the palace."
The following day, Hollywood Unlocked took to Twitter to offer their "deepest apologies" to the royal family for not being factual, but hours later, Lee himself said he woke up to "some fake account posting a retraction." He pointed out the fact that the palace has yet to release a statement and he will be "staying tuned." Per Operation London Bridge, unless the Press Association has confirmed that the queen is indeed dead, then it should be assumed that she's alive. But Lee doesn't seem to be privy to this SOP, and according to outlets that did some digging, he may have mixed up Queen Elizabeth for someone else.
Hollywood Unlocked's Jason Lee may have confused Queen Elizabeth with a singer
To say that Jason Lee is persistent would be an understatement. While Buckingham Palace already confirmed that Queen Elizabeth attended her weekly virtual meeting with Boris Johnson, Lee told BuzzFeed News that he heard that she was dead from a wedding guest present at the wedding of Edward Enninful.
Interestingly, the queen has no known relationship with Enninful, nor was she included in any published guest lists. Lee dished that the guest "close to the queen" received the news via a phone call and "reacted emotionally to a few people, and those few people were informed that that's what happened." But upon more probing by the outlet, he may have confused her alleged death with the passing of Queens of the Stone Age singer Mark Lanegan, who died unexpectedly on February 22. It's possible that he might have been invited to the wedding since some of the guests had close ties with '90s alt-rock.
Whatever the case, Lee remains adamant and insists Queen Elizabeth is dead. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and everything aligns with me feeling very confident, which is why I doubled down on it. Now if I'm wrong, I'll be the first one to go out there and say, hey, it's the first time I got it wrong," he said. "Our intentions are to be factual, to be first when reporting facts, and to trust our sources ... We don't do clickbait stories. We don't create gossip."