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Good thing Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement is there to soften the blow, because this summer’s other feel-good celebrity love story, between Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson, may not have been worth celebrating, or believing at all. The latest scuttlebutt is that Neeson and Anderson were only pretending to be in a relationship to promote their movie The Naked Gun. Now I’m wondering how I could have been so gullible and asking celebrities to kindly either knock it off with the fake romances or to do a better job and trick me more thoroughly. Because this half-assed fauxmance act is not serving any of us well.
But before we get into that, let’s review: In July, as 73-year-old Neeson and 58-year-old Anderson were making the publicity rounds to promote their movie, outlets like People, Page Six, and others broke the “news” that they were dating. Re-examining those articles now, it’s true that the actors themselves never confirmed it, but even so, it would have been easy for someone who was only sort of paying attention to get the impression that they were officially and unambiguously a couple: They smooched on the Today show! There were headlines about how they’re “madly in love!” When Andy Cohen gushed about their relationship to Anderson and Neeson on Watch What Happens Live, they had every opportunity to refute him, but instead they giggled and went along with it.
Whatever they were doing, it worked: People seemed genuinely moved by and taken with them as a couple, especially older people, who finally had a romance to root for between stars they could actually name, stars whom they’d watched age and go through their share of ups and downs—Neeson tragically lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, in 2009, and Anderson has been through several divorces. But over the past few weeks, seeds of doubt have emerged: After the Hollywood Reporter published an article with the headline “Are Pam and Liam for Real? Or Is This Another Hollywood Fauxmance?,” this week a reporter who runs a Substack focused on celebrity gossip ran a story quoting an “anonymous insider” who said “there was never a relationship to begin with” and that it was all just “clever marketing.” There’s reason to take this reporting with a grain of salt—it’s based on an anonymous source and hasn’t been substantiated—but looking back on their press tour, it’s clear that the supposed couple neither confirmed nor denied their romance, and in fact their What What Happens Live appearance makes a lot more sense in that context.
So we’ve all been had, more than likely. I actually often don’t mind when celebrities do this kind of thing—to a point. I love a little intrigue, and it’s fun for us all to have something to gossip about. Go ahead and be spotted with Paul Mescal smoking a cigarette and never explain it—live a little! When stars are merely in each others’ presence and fans and the press speculate based on that, that seems to me to be fair game for all parties. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell walked this line during the making and marketing of Anyone but You, and they even briefly revived that plotline earlier this year. But there’s a difference between not quashing romantic rumors when they come up and straight up running a con. Neeson and Anderson were edging toward the latter. Again: Neeson said the words “madly in love”! I watched that Today show clip again, and I’m half-convinced Neeson and Anderson only pretend to kiss in it??? Was it this obvious in retrospect? Am I mad they tricked me, or mad I was this easy to trick? It’s especially annoying to consider that someone out there thinks this is “clever marketing”—is it clever, or is it one of the oldest, most frequently recycled tricks in Hollywood? Neeson and Anderson may have gotten away with it because faking a relationship is usually seen as a young person’s game, but somehow, I’m having trouble seeing this as a blow against ageism.
All I ask if that if you’re going to fake a relationship, celebs, could you just be prepared to stick it out at least until the movie goes to streaming? I would have preferred to assume that their relationship fizzled out, and the fact that its possibly fictional nature is instead being discussed indicates to me that something about their plan was sloppily executed. They clearly didn’t stick the landing here. If you’re going to fake a relationship, you ought to at least fake commit to it.
