For Jennifer Lopez, Sterling K. Brown, Dakota Johnson and others, the standard publicity push isn’t so standard anymore. In the 1999 rom-com Notting Hill , the sheepish bookseller played by Hugh Grant goes to a hotel expecting a date with the megawatt star played by Julia Roberts.
He is surprised to find he has arrived at a press junket and looks adorably flustered as he’s shuffled from room to room, pretending to be a reporter from Horse & Hound to interview the stars of her space movie. The sequence is a handy introduction to this strange custom of film publicity: actors sitting in sterile suites for a parade of brief interviews. But these days that almost seems quaint.
The press tour has taken on a life of its own, with stars like Dakota Johnson, Jennifer Lopez and Zendaya making news for the tour itself with quippy sound bites, inscrutable looks and fashion moments. It can be gruelling for celebrities. Lupita Nyong’o recently described junkets as a “torture technique” in an interview with Glamour.
But these cycles can be more entertaining than the movies themselves. Grant’s bookseller would be baffled to learn that you can categorise the tours as follows: The animosity tour The promotion stops for nothing, not even cast members who appear to hate being in one another’s company. This seemed to be the case during the cycle for Atlas , Netflix’s new sci-fi flick starring Jennifer Lopez and Sterling K.
Brown. During joint interviews, Brown seemed unable to hel.
