Grace Morrell
We all love romance, whether we meet someone who we swear isn’t bad for us in person or we desperately search on dating apps. We all want someone to be ‘the one.’ Usually, to combat our emotions on this, we watch a film, a way to imagine ourselves in any sort of romantic endeavour. However, how far is the line pushed when actors create PR relationships to appeal to the public eye?
Romance has been a long-standing genre within film, whether you have the bittersweet story of Titanic (1997), or the yearning of 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). We all search for a little something whenever we watch a romantic film, whether it be a romcom or a dark romance. However, it can be said that directors, press teams and producers are now pushing more than the actual story. Nowadays, in romantic films, actors are usually expected to push to the press that they’re actually ‘in love,’ seeking chemistry behind the scenes and in junkets with unsuspecting interviewers.
This is present within PR Campaigns, where people band together to create a certain image of the movie, even perhaps a facade of what the movie will look like. PR has made and broken quite a few movies, and the same can most certainly be said about particular romantic films.
One of the examples of this is Anyone But You (2023), which pushed co-stars Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney as having ‘natural chemistry’ on and off screen, particularly during their PR campaign and interviews. This campaign, generally, worked. A lot of people seemed to buy into this campaign, with the initial $8 million made at the weekend tripling over the next two weeks at the box office because of younger audiences falling in love with the seemingly natural display of romance between the two actors. When looking at Letterboxd, so many people noted how out there the campaign was, how both actors seemed to bounce off each other like a house on fire – and whilst the movie was met with lukewarm reviews, the PR Campaign itself was praised for being ‘out there,’ piquing interest from many audiences alike. In fact, it is now the 5th highest-grossing (in Mexico) Romcom.
However, Sydney Sweeney and her fiancé at the time were involved with this campaign, both being executive producers of Anyone But You. And whilst their engagement may have lasted, Glen Powell’s relationship with his girlfriend did not. Whilst the reasoning for this break-up was cited as ‘long distance wasn’t working,’ the PR campaign (unsurprisingly) flared back up when both Powell and Sweeney were spotted together after Sweeney had split from her fiancé back in 2025, only to be seen with Powell at his sister’s wedding in March. Nevertheless, amid all these dating rumours, both actors have just… stayed friends.
‘Sweeney and Powell’s chemistry was fun, playful, and honestly quite charming to the general eye (even if the PR pushed it to extremes)’
A more dubious instance of this is the more-so recent release of Wuthering Heights (2026), in which the PR pushed a questionable obsession between co-stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Whilst social media pushed an ‘All-Time Classic’ for the film, its PR and Emerald Fennel’s previous film, Saltburn (2023), were both viewed with an increasingly critical eye. The issue with Wuthering Heights was its supposedly ‘ragebait worthy’ PR interviews.
Firstly, I should say that not all of the Wuthering Heights PR controversy comes down to the obsession between the leads; it also traces back to the book’s historical inaccuracies. Heathcliff is portrayed, in the books, as a man of colour. The issues with PR initially began with Jacob Elordi’s casting, with a white man portraying a man described as not white. This already stirred controversy, and the PR team added more to the pot by having Elordi and Robbie be obsessed with each other. This, in turn, gave a lot of people the ‘ick,’ as both depict their obsessions with each other… outside of the film.
However, as questionable as it may be, it made people watch the film. Whether to see how bad it was or to see if they could get invested in the tale it told, the PR team did rake in the views needed for monetary gains. This goes to show that bad publicity is still publicity, whether the audience likes it or not. What also helped was how divided people were on this film, at one point having a surge of 1-star and 5-star reviews alike (now, it sits at a 3-star general rating).
‘We live in a society that seems to scrutinise love – and admittedly, we all want to feel loved sometimes.’
The stark difference between these two films is the image of love they give off. Whilst Sweeney and Powell’s chemistry was fun, playful, and honestly quite charming to the general eye (even if the PR pushed it to extremes), Robbie and Elordi’s chemistry seemed… strange, oddly obsessive, and in all honesty, a bit weird for two actors who have established relationships. The fact that PR teams turn to this trope of interview runs for press releases, nevertheless, could say a thing or two about the world we’re in nowadays; we seek love. I think it’s fair to say nowadays, we live in a society that seems to scrutinise love – and admittedly, we all want to feel loved sometimes.
However, it is worth mentioning the blooming, yet private love story between Tom Holland and Zendaya. Both starred in the Spiderman ‘Home Trilogy’ together, having been MJ and Spiderman themselves, showing a natural chemistry on screen together that just seemed right. Their appeal on screen immediately took hold of many fans, and particularly those who might feel like they’ve even grown up with the two actors. Their relationship, in no way, feels like a stunt for PR or any sort of publicity for the two.
Maybe that is what PR teams need to tap into:
Show, and not tell.
Grace Morrell
Featured image courtesy of Loren Cutler via Unsplash. Image use license found here . Image was cropped to size.
In-article photos courtesy of @wutheringheightsmovie via Instagram and @anyonebutyoumovie via Instagram. No changes were made to these photos.
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