The fixers called in to clean up spicy celebrity scandals

With cancel culture in its prime, the want and need for the celebrity fixer to spin the fallout from a scandal has spread faster than the virus.

Samuel L Jackson, John Travolta and Harvey Keitel – aka ‘The Fixer’ – in the film Pulp Fiction.

“I am Winston Wolf. I solve problems.

“Good, we got one.

“So I heard, may I come in.”

Harvey Keitel’s scene-stealing role in Pulp Fiction as Mr Wolf, aka the fixer brought in when there’s a hot mess that needs to be cleaned up and the clock is ticking, could be a clip straight out of Melbourne 2021.

With cancel culture in its prime, the want and need for the celebrity fixer has spread like the virus.

Back in the day it was the job of a celebrity’s manager or publicist to handle the salty and spicy scandals that made the headlines.

The usual response was to say nothing, or put it through the spin cycle.

But as one fixer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said, the rules of engagement have blurred.

Keitel as ‘The Fixer’ in Pulp Fiction.

“They media and the public have become too smart, too educated and too cynical to be fed lies and spin,” the fixer said.

Now days a team is brought in: a lawyer, a communications consultant, a media adviser and someone to craft a carefully worded statement to manage the situation.

Or as one crassly put it to Page 13: “We come in to basically Ray Donovan the f--- out of it.”

Ray Donovan is the small-screen version of Keitel’s Mr Wolf. Played by Liev Schreiber, Donovan is a professional “fixer” who will stop at nothing to make the story about his celebrity clients go away within a 24 to 48 hour news cycle.

Because as another fixer said, “That’s always the aim. Try not to give it oxygen. Kill the story.

“You want to limit the damage. You want a one to two day story at most, not a two week story.

“It needs to be honest, authentic and swiftly operated. First get out a proper apology or a believable statement. The I’m bad, I’ve done bad, I’ll do better line and get on with it. Charity work or some sort of action is the next step down the track.”

Back to Melbourne and the case in point is high profile WAG and influencer Nadia Bartel.

Just hours after that snorting video of the now embattled influencer went viral, the fixers were fixing.

As one said, Bartel’s monolithic manager IMG is good at cutting deals with brands and getting their girl (and themselves) bang for her buck in the form of endorsements and sponsors.

But handling a crisis requires a different and fast paced nuance. Not picking up the phone when the media calls just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Nadia Bartel was rumoured to have called in a fixer team after her snorting video scandal.

These days the usual modus operandi is the apology. But what sort of apology? As the day ground on with Nadia, many options were put on the plate (oops, couldn’t resist).

There are plenty of ways to apologise. There is the sorry-I-got-caught footballer apology, or even slightly worse the sorry-if-I-offended-anyone non-apology.

Politicians love this one. There is even the apology that never actually uses the word sorry or regret.

One put on Nadia’s plate was the heartfelt apology in the form of a video to circulate to her 560,000 plus followers.

This could have been used to stop the other video from being played and replayed.

People will always cry crocodile tears, but if it’s not authentic it could backfire badly.

Guy Sebastian, anyone?

Another fixer wanted to apologise for her actions as being a one-time only thing. Unwise was the mood on that one.

Another, which eventually rolled out just before the news bulletins, was to show remorse and acknowledge Nadia’s actions as causing harm and hurt to others: ie to health and essential workers as the empathy apology.

Nadia is certainly not alone. George Calombaris had a team during the restaurant worker underpayment scandal, almost to the point where there were mixed messages on the menu.

David Warner had one on standby, often dialling in with the fixer after midnight for a workshop during sandpapergate.

Bartel ended up using the very people who helped rugby star Israel Folau to sell a dummy to the media pack while collecting some coin along the way.

Hot shot legal attack dog George Haros of Gadens knows how to assemble a rapid response team, quickly pulling in his Folau allies from Civic Reputation, including director Chris Newman.

Bartel ended up using the same people as scandal-prone Israel Folau.

Mark Hawthorne, a former senior Age editor, was in on the call.

Melbourne’s go-to problem solver Leon Zwier of Arnold Bloch Leibler is known around the top end traps as our Mr Fix-It. But Haros is hot on his barrister’s gown, already earning the moniker “Mr Wolf” among legal eagles.

Usually the fixers keep themselves out of the story and under the radar, which brings us back to Mr Anonymous. Even that has changed he said, with fixers enjoying a certain profile themselves.

Celebrity agent Max Markson is credited as one of the first to help put in the fix for the Aussie celebrity in trouble.

We asked the great spinner to share some stories after marking 30 years in the game next year with Markson Sparks.

While still not naming names (we did try but he stayed zipped) Markson said drug allegations were swirling around one high profile talent with a then-burgeoning television career.

Now a household name, Markson said plenty of favours were called in at the 11th hour. One was to shock jock Alan Jones, with others to federal politicians to help change and control the narrative.

It worked. The client is still big on the small screen and we are none the wiser. Ray Donovan and Mr Wolf eat your heart out!

Markson fondly remembers the truckloads of cash he made for Natasha Ryan, the girl who went missing and forever known as “the girl who hid in the cupboard.”

Ka-ching!

How times have changed. A lawyer soliciting clients at a disaster site was known as an ambulance chaser.

The term then extended to muckraker journos sniffing out a story.

Now it’s the fixers crying Mr Wolf.