Story taste: chicken nuggets, idk why, maybe I’m craving chicken nuggets

Story scent: some sort of light fabric freshener (kinda giving I was prepared but also real)

Play on repeat while reading: I guess something by no media training queen Reneé Rapp, or an EDM remix of all those aforementioned chaotic interviews.

In the year 2025 (oops, sorry, I mean 2026), celebrity culture is everywhere. It’s in our FYPs, in the books we read, and the news we keep up with; it’s basically sprinkled into everything we consume. So it’s often hard not to notice a shift in the way the people we watch present themselves.

Not to go too deep down the rabbit hole of celebrity behaviour throughout the years, but back in the 90s and 2000s, with no social media and under the reign of skeevy tabloids, celebs were fucking unhinged. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie sent out a party invite with a maximum weight requirement (it was something like 100lbs, and they claimed it was a joke, but girl, are you for real?), and Julia Roberts literally wore a shirt bullying her affair partner’s wife into divorcing him. It was all wild.

After it was all said and done, though, they had publicists craft statements, PR teams manage the crisis, and celebrities really did not need to do much explaining or speaking at all. They were these mysterious, problematic creatures whose existence was marketed as being on a different plane.

But then… then came the internet, and for the first couple of years, it felt like public figures didn’t realise this stuff was permanent. What we got was a Grammy-winning singer beefing with a random person in the comments section and a collection of absolutely horrifying Amanda Bynes tweets that should have prompted a medical intervention. Soon after that, when the PR people realised this could actually irrevocably harm their clients and prevent them from getting that bag, the media training kicked in.

Around the same time, the amount of press a celebrity had to do to market their work tripled. It wasn’t just a late-night show appearance and a magazine cover; it was every media outlet running 20 of its own interviews and posting them across socials. Celebs (or rather their teams) knew their work would sell more if they did more media appearances, and media outlets knew their numbers would double if they hosted more celebs; a sort of symbiotic relationship was born.

For a while, we got pre-rehearsed answers, light jokes and perfect posture. But it seems new-gen celebrities, just like their new-gen audiences, want to add a bit of chaos into the mix. And honestly, thank god, if I had to sit through another press release-esque interview, I’d probably, well, I’d probably get offline and actually do something productive, but whatever.

Thoughts on this new way of unhinged have been flowing in my head for a while. I mean, we all saw that Marty Supreme promo Zoom call, so… you know. But it sort of solidified after I began noticing TikToks of the press the guys from Heated Rivalry have been doing to promote the show that honestly doesn’t really need promoting anymore, we are all aware.

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie (especially Hudson) have been absolutely unfiltered and both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious online, and the internet has welcomed them with open arms. Phrases like “never get them media trained” immediately flood every comment section of their videos.

And yeah, they’re young actors who blew up due to the show’s massive success (binged it in a night myself), so they are now facing the world of celebrity just being themselves. But as a person who has graduated into the world of curation and PR moves, I am left questioning if the “no media training” of it all is an actual attempt by people in the public eye to be genuine about their emotions and experiences, or is it just another strategic move to market themselves as authentic?

I can also see how tough it might be to get famous practically overnight, but based on everything I saw, they seem to be handling it quite well. As I was writing this, I came across a video about both actors’ media training. It basically stated that although they do often chat some crazy shit and fuck around, they take a more serious approach to serious questions ( the tone shift from talking about ass cheeks to character breakdown discussions was a little jarring, but very impressive) and set clear boundaries with their personal lives without sounding overly guarded or hostile. So maybe the new media training is in fact being your silly, goofy self, but having enough restraint not to slip up and shift the conversation when needed.

Of course, we can’t talk about media training or lack thereof without mentioning the Reneé Rapp of it all. A queen of intrusive thoughts who had repeatedly spoken about ignoring the suggestions of her publicists and saying anything that comes to mind. And for her, it paid off big. From the first interview, we were hooked, and every press and media appearance she has made since then has just reassured the audience that she will do whatever tf she wants over and over again. She has established her place in the I-don’t-give-a-fuck land so hard that even if someone does try to criticise her, the fact remains, she appears not to give a fuck.

To be honest, for celebrities, it is sort of an ideal scenario: even if it is recommended by their team and carefully planned, they are still essentially being told to be themselves. Whether a strategy or just a way of living, you can’t really fake authenticity. And many have tried. But celebrities cosplaying silly or genuinely always ends with the world saying, “That’s just not you, babe.”

Even strategies that might not aim for authenticity as much as they just turn the celeb’s personality up to the max have worked better than giving them a character to play in real life. After all, they spent years marketing Timothée Chalamet as a mysterious French boy, and we couldn’t give two fucks about it, but the second they let him comment on the college (was it baseball, idk) games, fuck around in hoodies, record rap features and stand on a giant sphere we were like “fuck yes give us more Timmy”.

And not all of it was for Marty Supreme. If you remember his A Complete Unknown press tour, it very much followed the same trajectory of strange, seemingly random appearances. The only reason they were able to turn it up even higher for Marty Supreme is cause we were paying more attention, and I guess he wanted us to watch the movie real bad.

All of it does come off as authentic, but then again, can we really know what’s going on behind closed doors? The problem with putting our trust in someone to the point of a parasocial relationship is that the second the person does something we don’t think aligns with their authentic self (or more accurately with the idea of their authentic self we have created), we turn our backs on them. This is where the no-media-training strategy can really bite you in the ass.

I turn your attention back to Heated Rivalry, this time in the context of I Love LA (another show I watched obsessively), and its star, Jordan Firstman, who criticised Heated Rivalry (questioning the authenticity of the characters and the actors who portray them). He said some stuff that split the internet in half (some people agreed with him, others disagreed). I myself don’t really feel the need to insert my opinion here, since I am not a gay man, so why would I even?

Anyway, I think the genuine consensus was that even if his opinion carried validity, it should not have been shared publicly, not because it should not be discussed or addressed, but because it took away from the task at hand, which is people watching I Love LA. So, in this case, the no-publicist-in-the-room (or maybe there was one, but they didn’t think it through, clearly) was the wrong move. They handled the whole thing really fast, though. Another perk of social media is that a single joint post made everyone chill out a bit.

I guess nowadays, if you’re a celebrity and online, or even just promoting something, you need to be on all the time. Or, if you’re not weird as fuck, just be yourself, and it will all work out. Maybe the actual media training should be reserved for those who, when saying the first thing that comes to mind, always end up saying something odd and incredibly problematic. For young celebrities who are educated enough to give both silly and reserved, they can just vibe.

I don’t have a problem with media training or no media training since the true character always shines through. Even with the best rehearsed answers, acted-out scenarios, and scrubbed internet histories, there is a part of our brain that can just tell that something is off. So I guess the main thing here is just to be a good person, and there’s really no way to media train for that.