Ana de Armas was perched atop a balcony railing, standing in the late-November New Orleans sun and leaning against her boyfriend, Ben Affleck, as he idly puffed on a cigarette. She kissed the actor before placing her left hand on his chest to admire the sizable diamond decorating her ring finger.
That intimate moment went on to dominate the celebrity news cycle for the next 24 hours, with both tabloids and social media proclaiming that it was confirmation of the couple’s engagement—before realizing we’d already lived through this story once before. In April, de Armas was photographed wearing the same prop diamond while filming this same movie (Deep Water) in which she and Affleck play a married couple. (They are not yet, at least not publicly, engaged.) While the media narrative may have been totally false—twice—it did demonstrate the remarkable pandemic-era power of an expertly timed photograph.
Plenty of celebrities avoid or even sue the paparazzi for the sake of their privacy, but many others will welcome them—or at least learn how to use them to their advantage. For stars as famous as de Armas and Affleck, the paparazzi will often be there whether they like it or not. But during a year when so much of the Hollywood publicity machine has been put on hold and social distancing has kept TMZ’s interlocutors at bay, many stars seem to have become more comfortable with letting those long-lens photos drive the public narrative for them—announcing new couples like de Armas and Affleck and Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, breakups like Demi Lovato’s, and at least one illicit affair. And whether you’re a bona fide celebrity or just an aspiring famous person, there are a million reasons to call the paparazzi on yourself—and even more reasons to deny it.
This public relations strategy has been around as long as the profession but reached its zenith in the early aughts when it may have been expertly and prolifically deployed by a then on-the-rise Kim Kardashian West. In 2006 she went on a date with Nick Lachey, who at the time was much more famous. “Let’s just say this: We went to a movie. No one followed us there,” he recalled to Details in 2013. “Somehow, mysteriously, when we left, there were 30 photographers waiting outside. There are certain ways to play this game, and some people play it well.”
Whether or not they’re cooperating with the press, a small handful of celebrities has largely had the gossip press to themselves this year. According to Giles Harrison, a Los Angeles–based paparazzi and founder of London Entertainment Group, “I used to see 10, 20 celebrities a week, now I’m lucky if I see two. This round of shutdowns has been worse than the first round of shutdowns. As the pandemic has gone on, it seems like it’s gotten tighter and tighter.” But that scarcity of sightings also means that every star, no matter how small, is pretty much guaranteed to get some tabloid traction right now just for stepping outside.
Spencer Pratt, The Hills reality star and early-aughts proponent of tipping off the paps, confirms that it’s not your imagination that certain celebrities are suddenly getting more screen time during the pandemic. He says that according to one of the photographers he’s worked with, before California’s most recent lockdown, P.R. teams were “reaching out more than ever” to set up opportunities for their clients because “all of the usual hot spots they know to go to where there were photographers are no longer there.”
