Celebrity break up culture from a PR perspective

Caption: Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas weeks before announcing their divorce. Source: Sophie Turners’ Instagram, @sophiet.

‘Love is dead.’

It’s a phrase we often use to describe the dwindling pool of dateable others and online dating etiquette. But lately it’s become a ubiquitous expression amongst the aftermath of a parasocial relationship induced, fever dream of a celebrity couple, who have suddenly split.

People say we often remember exactly where we were when major events happened.

So it is with approximately 90% confidence (give or take all of that) that I say everyone remembers where they were when they found out Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn broke up. Whether you saw depressing edits on TikTok to ‘London Boy,’ or heard about it from people gossiping all over campus, it’s a day we’ll all never forget.

Kind of like how you remember the day you found out Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal broke up (just me…? Cool). Or Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborah Lee-Furness. Or Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez. Or Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott. Or Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello. Or Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner.

And those are just celebrity couples who’ve broken up this year. Maybe love really is dead?

Maybe mercury is still in retrograde or there's some astrological reason why more and more celebrities are parting ways. But if there’s one overarching theme to celebrity breakups over the years it's that they always follow the same pattern. There’s teams of PR professionals behind the scenes working their magic to mitigate the fallout from a celebrity break up.

Molly McPherson, crisis communication expert by day, pop culture PR oracle outside her 9-5, explains the role of the news cycle and how PR teams will use this to their advantage. According to McPherson, August is a “news desert,” as nobody is paying attention to it in America where most celebrities and their teams are based. PR professionals will release information in different months, at different points of the week to attenuate the public response.

From Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’ divorce statement, McPherson suspected a few things were amiss before allegations came out against Jonas for not letting Turner take their two daughters back to the UK with her. Their divorce statement was released to their respective Instagram accounts on September 6th which said, “After four wonderful years of marriage, we have mutually decided to amicably end our marriage. There are many speculative narratives as to why but, truly this is a united decision and we sincerely hope that everyone can respect our wishes for privacy for us and our children.”

McPherson notes the suspicious timing of the statement as it was released on the Friday of Labour Day weekend in America. Presumably, this was an attempt to bury the story as newsrooms are “somewhat depleted and empty.” She also notes the double appearance of the word ‘marriage’ in the first sentence of the statement as well as the word ‘amicably’ which she says, “usually indicates it’s not so amicable.”

“As someone who writes statements like this for a living, I often can tell when there is more than one hand in the pot here. Typically, one person will author a statement and then they’ll hand it off and other people will start to redline that statement. [...] When other people get involved, they don’t know your strategy, your tone, and things get lost and a little muddled,” says McPherson.

Given the use of typical PR jargon with the wordy “speculative narratives,” it's clear the statement was heavily redlined by both Turner’s and Jonas’ PR teams, resulting in a very muddy statement. And actually, any positive turns of phrase are likely to be PR spin in motion and this kind of aggressive optimism is seen across most celebrity break up statements. It’s likely that celebrities themselves are wanting to look back on these statements without regret, but they’re also engineered by PR representatives tasked with keeping celebrities out of hot water.

Celebrity break up culture has really hit its peak this year, that’s for sure, and every major pop culture media outlet is talking about it. We’ve all formed weird parasocial bonds to celebrities over these past few years and now it seems like no celebrity couple is safe anymore.

So maybe really is dead. But as Emily Ratajkowski says, “Personally I find it chic to be divorced before 30.”