Teasing real-life romance between movie leads is an old Tinseltown publicity trick but modern audiences may have had enough
“Sporting matching signet rings” engraved with “poetics about their twinned souls”, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are the latest on-screen lovers hinting at off-screen romance, said The Times. As publicity for the much-awaited new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” reaches “fever pitch”, its leads have been leaning into the fantasy with a series of “entwined” interviews and touchy-feely red carpet moments.
“This is not a case of life imitating art” – Robbie has been married to producer Tom Ackerley since 2016, and they had their first child in 2024 – but a particularly shameless “showmance”, “a relationship cultivated by two stars to catapult a film into the zeitgeist”.
Even before the film hit UK cinemas, the “Byronic showmance” between its stars was “moving at warp speed to Planet Vomit”, said The Telegraph. During the promotional campaign, Elordi and Robbie have been “wrapped around each other like poison ivy, waxing lyrical about their ‘mutual obsession'”.
They have “tried really, really hard to make everyone think they are besotted lovers”, rather than “professional colleagues with a product to sell”, said The Guardian. Is this how stupid the film industry thinks we become? Something’s “badly wrong” if we all have to watch them “go moony-eyed over each other, knowing full well they’ll drop the artifice like a stone when they each get something new to promote”.
Even platonic friendship isn’t safe from this Hollywood hysteria. While promoting “Wicked” and its sequel, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were “clinging to each other” and “sobbing like they’d just watched their childhood houses burn down”. Did we not once understand that “an actor’s performance began with the opening credits and ended when the lights went up”?
Hollywood has actually been here before – when “the old school studios ordered a young starlet to marry her co-star to promote a new release or a pair of teen sensations were asked to prolong a spent relationship”, said Tatler.
In the Golden Age, big studios like MGM and Universal “locked in” stars with “golden-handcuff contracts”, said The Times. They made them sign morality clauses to control their off-screen love life, and forced them participate in “fabricated romantic pairings” to promote movies – or even sometimes to “deflect rumours”. In 1955, Universal arranged for closeted gay heartthrob Rock Hudson to be married off to his agent’s secretary amid swirling speculation about his sexuality.
Today’s showmances are less formally planned, Hollywood marketing agent Stacy Jones told the paper. The idea is to generate speculation without explicitly confirming a romance: “never lie, but don’t rush to clarify either”. It’s all “about amplifying chemistry that already feels believable”.
But toying with audiences like this can backfire. Many people “seemed genuinely moved” when Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson appeared to have fallen for one another while making “The Naked Gun”, said Slate – only for the whole affair to be revealed as a “sloppily executed” showmance the moment the promotional tour was over. “If you’re going to fake a relationship, celebs, could you just be prepared to stick it out at least until the movie goes to streaming?”
