Blockbuster break-ups
Anatomy of a celebrity break-up
Celebrity divorce lawyers have been busy... it feels like there’s a new break-up hitting our newsfeeds every week. But as we all become more savvy to the inner workings of the A-list PR machine, how do the insiders keep reputations firmly intact?
Within seconds, the comments begin to pile up. It’s a Friday afternoon and the latest celebrity split has just hit our Instagram feeds. The announcement sets off a ripple effect: celebrity journalists cancel their dinner plans and begin furiously typing their stories. The stars’ publicists are carefully watching the reaction – there are certain details they really don’t want out there (and some they definitely do). As for the celebrities everyone’s talking about? She’s on tour. He’s cuddling up to his new girlfriend. The split happened months ago. It’s only now, after multiple meetings and rewrites of the statement that we get to know about it. Welcome to the wild world of celebrity break-ups…
I’ve been working as a celebrity journalist for more than a decade and even I can’t keep up with how many showbiz break-ups there have been this year. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn. Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas. Jodie Turner-Smith and Joshua Jackson. Ricky Martin and Jwan Yosef. Britney Spears and Sam Asghari. Even Jada Pinkett Smith recently revealed that, while not legally divorced, she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. And by the time you read this, there will probably be a few more to add to the list.
And while, from my experience in the real world, relationship breakdowns are usually messy, complicated and painful, in the world of showbiz, they maintain a veneer of mutual and loving, with both parties vowing to stay mates.
Something is going on in the world of showbiz – and it’s not just the divorce lawyers working overtime. There’s a whole host of publicists and dedicated crisis management teams who hustle behind the scenes to try to make a split appear as rosy as possible. There’s the now legendary ‘consciously uncoupling’ statement from Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth said they ‘move forward with deep love, kindness and mutual respect’ and Sofía Vergara and Joe Manganiello ‘love and care for each other very much’. But those statements are hiding a multitude of secrets. Secrets that are carefully controlled by a team of people. So what really goes on behind the scenes of a split? I dug deep into my contacts book to find out…
It is with great sadness...
Think about your most recent split. You bitched about them to your friends, right? Celebs are the same. Except when they’re bitching, it’s to their publicist rather than their BFF. ‘As a publicist, you know every detail of your client’s life so you’re one of the first people they call if they go th
