Lily James pulls out of movie publicity amid Dominic West photo scandal
Actor Lily James was meant to be spruiking her new movie this week. Instead she is at the centre of a scandal with a married co-star. So how did this very modern drama come about?
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When actor Dominic West and wife Catherine Fitz-Gerald stepped outside their Wiltshire home this week and told the waiting press pack that their marriage was still strong, it was the cringe-worthy result of a very modern scandal, one born in part by the international health crisis we find ourselves in.
The highly staged display of unity came just 24 hours after photos of West and fellow actor Lily James threw a big question mark over their 10-year-marriage.
West, 51, and James, 31, who are currently filming the BBC series The Pursuit of Love together — where they play father and daughter — were seen getting very close in Italy on the weekend.
It appeared to be a very cosy Roman Holiday for the co-stars who were captured in a series of photos that showed what looked to be West caressing and kissing James at a restaurant while other snaps saw his hand on her bottom as they visited a local church.
West raced home after the pictures surfaced, clearly needing to talk through a few things with FitzGerald, before the pair fronted up the following morning.
The couple, who have four children together, walked out of their home in the south west England town of Wiltshire where the paparazzi was eagerly waiting. Catherine was holding a note signed by the couple together with a crumpled tissue.
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“I just want to say our marriage is strong and we are very much still together,” West said before leaving the note that said exactly the same thing. The pair then embraced and kissed for the cameras, although both kept their hands in their pockets and probably won’t win an Oscar for their performance.
To say this was an awkward charade is an understatement. For an actor of West’s talent, it was a D-grade performance.
West shot to international fame in 2002 playing hardened detective Jimmy McNulty in five seasons of the ground-breaking drama The Wire.
In a possible case of life imitating art, the two-time Golden Globe nominee also played Noah Solloway, a husband and father-of-four who cheats on his wife with a grieving waitress in Foxtel’s The Affair, which also ran for five seasons from 2014.
James was the picture of innocence in 2018’s Mamma Mia and had starring roles in Baby Driver, Darkest Hour and Yesterday.
But so shaken was she by the headlines that followed the publication of the photos of her with West that she pulled out of media commitments on Thursday where she had been scheduled to talk about her new Netflix movie adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.
The photos don’t exactly fall into the worst category and without context can be interpreted in different ways. There are reports that James actually called FitzGerald to insist nothing untoward had happened in Rome. The pair’s agent was also with them and she is very close to West’s wife.
Regardless, the photos would have come as a rude shock to FitzGerald back at home. When she stepped out in front of the cameras the following morning, she was probably in a state of shock.
Psychotherapist and marriage counsellor Melissa Ferrari says when a partner is confronted with information suggesting infidelity — even if it is yet to be confirmed — it can be a sucker punch that takes time to recover from.
“The brain will process it as a trauma and it can bring up PTSD symptoms,” she says, adding that anger is often the last emotion to come.
West and James are said to have became close while filming The Pursuit Of Love, a BBC series based on the novel of the same name by Nancy Mitford, in a COVID bubble.
This new safety measure is designed to get the film and television industry back into production and is similar to what we’ve seen with major sporting codes across the globe.
At home we’ve seen it with Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers where the cast and crew are shooting in and around Byron Bay under strict conditions in an effort to keep the virus at bay. The Masked Singer was also shot in a bubble in Melbourne (but even that didn’t keep the virus out with production halted in late Auguest after a crew member tested positive).
Everyone involved in a production bubble has to spend weeks, sometimes months, away from their families as they produce whatever film or series they’re working on. Family and friends can’t visit and there’s no popping out to see the sights or tour the area you’re staying in. One could conceivably be a hermit outside of the working day, but a more likely scenario is one where a lot of downtime is spent with the very same people you’ve just been with for hours on end.
It’s not hard to imagine close ties forming in such a unique and claustrophobic environment.
The other modern thorn in the side of West and FitzGerald’s show of unity is the fact that in the digital age, comments last forever. What you said years ago in a totally different context can be brought up and used
against you in a few swift taps on the keyboard. And that’s exactly what has happened with West.
When interviewed by Britain’s Evening Standard in 2014 about his role in The Affair, West threw out some red flags when it comes to his views on monogamy.
“I think women should be more indulgent of affairs. I really do. It’s daft to kick someone out over a fling. Isn’t it?” he told the publication.
“Everyone should turn a blind eye to men’s behaviour between the ages of 40 and 50. Let it all blow over.”
Obviously he knew at the time these were controversial comments and he could very well have said them in an effort to drum up some free publicity for the series.
But when they surfaced again within minutes of those photos being released the media was quick to pounce.
James too has said things in the past that, taken by themselves, aren’t particularly noteworthy but in the current context add more fuel to the scandal’s fire.
“I think I make mistakes all the time, you know that’s what life’s about and I would never want to run away from a situation or be too scared to act,” she told Harper’s Bazaar just last month.
“I think that it’s better to throw yourself in and make mistakes with an open heart.
“If your instincts are right even if they’re misguided, you can recover from your mistakes and learn from them.”
The lesson that James and West will hopefully learn from this ongoing saga is that nobody’s safe from a modern day scandal, even — or maybe especially — in a bubble.