Love affairs, rifts and close friendships have long been an element of filmmaking. Just think back to 1963, when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fell in love during the filming of Cleopatra. However, thanks to social media, never before have we had such unprecedented access to BTS drama and celebrity life.
You didn’t have to be on the 2023 Oscars red carpet, or following The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage, to see Hugh Grant’s painfully awkward interview with model Ashley Graham, in which he was unapologetically himself by answering questions such as “what are you wearing” with a snarky “my suit” – it was on TikTok 10 minutes later. Same goes for when Ryan Gosling jokingly brushed off Simu Liu on the red carpet while promoting Barbie last year, bringing his Ken-ergy to the real world and getting fans even more hyped about his character.
Look of love? Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney on the red carpet last year.Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Many celebrities have adapted to the modern-day press tour, leaning into their characters when off-screen, building charisma with their co-stars, and sharing even more of themselves in intimate, comedic (online) settings such as Hot Ones and the Vanity Fair lie detector test. Compared with carefully curated magazine covers or manufactured talk-show interviews, today’s press tours – which are online, non-stop and immediately available – scream authenticity, even if they are equally curated.
It was once enough to tease audiences with the same old red-carpet move. For example, Nicole Kidman used the same move with Tom Cruise and Keith Urban – they embrace her around the waist and whisper sweet nothings into her ear. But now, if celebrities want people to see the film in droves, they must either tend to the fans’ parasocial relationship or create some kind of intrigue beyond the plot of the film. One go-to move isn’t going to cut it.
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However, as quick and effective as social media press tours are, they require a careful balance. Give too little and fans will assume a degree of pretentiousness. Give too much, like Grande and Erivo, and some may accuse them of inauthenticity.
But, as the Wicked duo surely knows, any press is good press, so it’s likely they will continue holding each other’s fingernails until they reach the end of the yellow brick road.
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