Real reason we are so obsessed with celebrity feuds
The mess surrounding a feud currently unfolding before our eyes is the starkest sign yet of where the world is headed.
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There is an overwhelming, loin-girding amount going on in the world right now so let’s talk about the only story that matters: Are two actors, who a couple of months ago none of us could have picked out of a lineup of talented but jobbing supporting thespians, locked in a cold war?
The third outing of The White Lotus has just finished, the Mike White-created Emmy winner garnering record ratings.
His series of entitled, unlovable sorts terrorising a five-star hotel with their emotional, sexual and psychological travails while ordering mai tais and doing some murder started in February had audiences freshly obsessed.
And soon the internet’s magnifying glasses came out and social media users were busy proving they have far too much time on their hands having found supposed clues that stars Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood, whose characters Rick and Chelsey’s relationship is central to the plot, were in fact not on speaking terms.
The story has gone from an entertaining, gossipy distraction to internet-dominating and if admitting it is the first step, then let me start.
In the scheme of things that we are hooked on right now, like Yo-Chi, Temu and largely blanking the federal election, then we can certifiably add the Reddit-powered celebrity feud industry.
The case of the Internet versus Goggins and Wood involves signs concerning Instagram follows and unfollows and tagging and not tagging and more close textual reading of social media posts than any sane human really needs to be fully across.
But there in the sub, sub parts of the Internet’s cleaned up comments section of a site, Redditors ferreted out what they say is the truth.
And then things only got messier.
Last weekend, Saturday Night Live parodied Lotus with Woods hitting out at the “mean and unfunny” portrayal of her teeth, which she said “punched down”.
Then the drama only got dialled up when she was photographed crying on a London street.
When reports emerged suggesting it was her SNL portrayal that had in tears, she again took to social media to deny it.
Goggins for his part however, backed the sketch, commenting on an Instagram post about the skit, “Hahahahahhahaha Amazzzingggg.”
By the time you read this, there will probably be three or four new developments.
Anyone else suddenly feeling a creeping, creeping sense of deja vu? We’ve been here before and not that long ago.
The supposed Wood/Goggins hostilities have real shades of what was by far and away 2024’s biggest celebrity story, the Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni battle, a dispute that has only continued to exponentially escalate from tea-worthy to career-threatening, nuclear fall-out level.
Just think: Last year we had the most consequential election of our lifetimes and bloody war and more bloody and yet the clash between the co-stars of a Colleen Hoover adaptation hogged headlines and held the world hooked.
Like with Goggins and Wood, first came the internet’s noticing that something was amiss between Lively and Baldoni around the release of their highly successful project (It Ends With Us) followed by a steady stream of bigger and bigger revelations.
In Lively and Baldoni’s case, things took a turn for deadly serious when out came allegations of sexual harassment, fat shaming, an orchestrated smear campaign and defamation.
Baldoni has since sued the New York Times, Lively and her husband actor Ryan Reynolds, with barely a week going by without some fresh development.
As barometers of our obsession go, the very fact that there is a docuseries about the Lively and Baldoni clash already in the works, even before the cases get anywhere near a courtroom, is a pretty good one.
Recent years have seen similar versions of this play out.
There was Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s muscly rift out being sleuthed via social media and then the Manolo-ed version of the same story when it came to Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall.
(Such was the feud-induced heightening of attention that when Cattrall filmed one scene for the TV reboot And Just Like That she was reportedly paid $1.5 million for the 71 second cameo.)
In 2022, the best show around was the Don’t Worry Darling press tour with armchair Poirots busy divining signs of a deep falling out between director Olivia Wilde and actress Florence Pugh.
In 2023 social media posts from Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber were forensically scrutinised for feud clues as there appeared to be some tit for tatting going on.
There is now something of an online niche in keyboard detectives doing forensic deep dives to suss out the ‘truth’ about celebs, especially feuds or bad blood. We can handle the truth
and oh baby do we want it.
Maybe the addictiveness lies in the fact that despite marketing spends larger than the UN’s peacekeeping budget, humungous TV series and movies can come a cropper thanks to something so human, so teenager-ish, as a hurt or personal dislike.
It’s a bit like peering behind the curtain and seeing that the Great Wizard is just one man, these moments when messy, wounded feelings escape out from behind the Hollywood’s sheen.
Maybe it’s the satisfaction of the online proletariat working out something we are not meant to know, that thanks to Instagram especially the wool can no longer be pulled so thoroughly over the public’s eyes.
Call it the Gotcha Quotient.
And maybe cases like those of Goggins/Wood and Lively/Baldoni things are heightened by the disconnect between their onscreen chemistry and the reality and the he-said, she-said of it all.
Maybe this is the news version of the lipstick effect, that little luxuries can sell like hot cakes during recessions because we need a treat.
With what is going on over there (gestures towards the Stars and Stripes) we need to lose ourselves in something where the stakes are, all but zero, which reading won’t jack up our cortisol and heart rates and accelerate our plans to finally put in that bunker out the back.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Real reason we are so obsessed with celebrity feuds
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