Are movie press tours good for anything? Obviously, they generate excellent long-form interviews in what we are obliged to call legacy media. Obviously! But so much of the operation seems to involve dumping talent in front of the poster and inviting them to spout the same empty platitudes for blink-and-you’ll-miss-them online videos. Except when it doesn’t. Look at the business from an oblique angle and you might conclude we are in a new golden age for the press beano.
So, yes, we need to talk about Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Over the past few weeks the stars of Wicked have been generating much puzzlement – and no little ridicule – with their weirdly lachrymose responses to entertainment journalists. Holding hands with the stiff, clinical delicacy of a surgeon testing an internal organ, they are forever misting over as they express mutual respect through choked sobs.
Endless snippets have gone viral. “In what way has the person sitting next to you changed you for good?” Jake from Jake’s Takes asked them a few weeks ago. Both seemed overpowered by Jake from Jake’s Take’s take. “Oh my God,” they said in eerie unison. “It was a beautiful question ... That’s a very thoughtful question ... moving.” They fanned themselves. By the close they were both dabbing eyes as they explained their complementary affections.
The clip that really took the tour to another level found one Tracy E Gilchrist, an interviewer for out.com, explaining that people had been “holding space” for the lyrics from Defying Gravity, Wicked’s act-two closer, and “feeling power” from them. “I didn’t know that was happening,” Erivo, wearing a huge green military side cap, says in a voice so broken with emotion you’d swear she’d just heard her budgie had been run over. Grande grabs her finger comfortingly as they attempt to marshal emotions.
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There is more where that came from. It‘s easy to laugh. All the more reason to do so, perhaps. But the chatter around the press tour has surely helped drive Wicked to an enormous opening at the US box office. Indeed, this sort of sentimental gush – no doubt sincere – is just what fans of this self-affirming musical relish. Others may be drawn to the film by the sheer oddness of the actors’ engagement.
Not every press tour can deliver box-office success. At the other end of the year, Dakota Johnson, stuck promoting the doomed Madame Web, delivered considerably more good fun than anyone experienced watching that Spider-Man spinoff. The Hollywood Reporter denounced “a tangled web of conspiracy theories and misconstrued quotes to create the narrative Johnson hated her own movie”. But the actor’s lugubrious tone certainly got people interested.
The most amusing clip saw her admit to complete ignorance of the titles of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films. “Spider-Man: Here He Comes, that’s number one,” she ventured. She then went on to suggest “Spider-Man: And He’s Back” and “The Goblet of Spider-Man”. It is, in certain fan circles, regarded as sacrilege to show such disdain for franchise lore. What so hypnotised about Johnson’s attitude was the sense that she didn’t give what Ridley Scott wouldn’t call “a flying fudge”.
Ah, Sir Ridley. Now we’re talking. Over the past 45 years or so that director has excelled at press events by saying whatever the hell he likes. He does this on short video takes. He does this in longer profile interviews. I was among those lucky enough to catch him on his legendarily sweary tour for Napoleon last year.
”He’s not royalty. He’s f**king working class!” he said of his protagonist. “Excuse me, mate, were you there?” he said of overly pernickety historians. “No? Well, shut the f**k up then.” Looking back at the tour, the Guardian argued: “Ridley Scott talking about anything in public is wonderful.”
There have been other recent press charabancs of note. Remember the rumoured fallings out over Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling? (No, Harry Styles didn’t gob on Chris Pine’s lap.) Remember Lady Gaga touting her own method acting during the press for House of Gucci?
“I think it’s a broken model,” Cillian Murphy said of the press-tour system last year. “The model is – everybody is so bored.” He is not wrong. Of course, most tours are drab and weary. God help the talent keeping straight faces as journos force them to play silly parlour games. But the sheer volume of interviews and the concomitant pressure put on talent can, as we have seen, generate odd and entertaining results.
Dakota Johnson’s creative ennui springs from the need to be always in conversation. We wouldn’t have got the full rosary of eccentricity from Grande and Erivo if they’d done just a 3,000-word profile for the New York Times.
Bless both them. They have added greatly to the gaiety of nations.
