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Yet another fantastic move from Nicola to compound all her fantastic moves this year. At the height of her popularity 😉 she posts this!! How amusing.

Just to qualify why I think this is a PR error. Nicola is associating herself with a product that is not hers. So depending on your view of Nicola it could enhance or taint the project. Whatever you may feel about her, or her and Jake (good or bad) will be transfers to this project. It also diminishes Jake to her nepo baby again, as if he can’t stand on his own two feet, or the project, without Nicola holding his/its hand. It comes over as presumptuous that her endorsement will help in anyway. I can’t see this poster on Netflix’s account and she may have jumped the gun before the official launch (but my searching was brief) Either way Nicola has made herself the subject of this project and not Jake. So if successful Nicola can benefi & take some of the shine, if a flop they will never know if her sanctioning helped or hindered. What a liability. I hope Jake is grateful.

Good post and agree with a lot of the points. First distinction I would want to make PR is used to sell a product or someone connected to a product. Media is curating an ongoing story for an individual to establish relevance and engagement in an attempt to be known, while actually retaining some privacy. These are two slightly different things and can clash. So with this in mind, & as someone who was in the media business and is still connected to many within, I see it with a slightly different slant.

Nicola has stepped back from her social media. It could seem that way if just looking at her IG but she has let people within her circle post a highly curated version of her private life. She can proclaim on Dish that she wants to keep things private, but gives permission for others to place her in venues & events. We know this is curated because when things got bumpy it immediately stopped. Luke now seems to be adopting a very similar approach.

I’m certain CAA have put her up for meetings & auditions but they just haven’t turned into offers.

Nicola definitely did make some brilliant moves on some substantial issues but has seemed to burn most of that down with quite a few contradictions: whether that be not letting a boyfriend define you, to finding positive female body representation boring, to going to an event promoting a company heavily linked to a country she berated others for not speaking out against. Not the greatest of strategies for someone with a brilliant media mind.

SAGs was way more than just courteous, because the media people around them would not have reacted the way they did & was not courteous of Luke if his gf was back at the hotel. Who made that decision. Nic, Luke, Shonda. Because someone made the decision to leave Antonia behind if there.

Everyone who works in the industry signs contracts. Everyone on the set & everyone in a celebrities social life will sign NDA’s It is a known thing.

If in PR and media you know that what people see of you is what they will think of you and if you don’t correct nature fills in the vacuum. Jake has put out articles that he has had difficulties in coming to terms with his sexuality and how his father felt uncomfortable. He only appears to have gay male friends, he puts out a lot of gay iconography and music. So is it unreasonable for people to assume he is and that his connection to Nic was a surprise, and why did his colleagues on WIFLTBAG call him a liar on the red carpet. PR/media relationships do happen so not totally crazy to believe they could be in one and Nic has done this before.

IMO what has happened is an absence of strategy. Being totally ill prepared for post their world tour and did not address papgate swiftly and clearly, whatever the message may have been and allowed Bridgerton etc to promote the show through a persistent Lukola lens & encouraging the supporters of the show to push the idea that N& L were an item. So Jack and other members of the crew now seem to be liars. Nic also gave permission for her fans to ship them & then called them parasocial for doing so. So what could have caused such confusion, or what person.

If any of this had been better managed they wouldn’t be where they are now with Nic BM2 getting very few eyes and Luke attacked on all sides.

After a long day in London, reclining on my sofa with a beer, staring at the TV wistfully wondering where the football had gone, my mind wandered to our favourite couple after the incredulous events of the day and thought, why is this happening?! This is the best I could come up with and you can decide whether it holds water.

As you know after their WT Luke & Nic where at the centre of a media storm that upset some around them with expectations So after a year of intense scrutiny it was decided that 2 narratives would be created to deflect and appease. This I expect was supposed to calm things down. It did not! Instead their supporters fractured and started sniping at each other and instead of calm the two other narratives of Jakola and Lutonia became just as large and unwieldy as Lukola. Attacking each other, at risk of consuming each other and killing all their popularity and have just recently realised it could/has impacted their careers.

So what do their media teams do now? Try to deflate the heads that they created. A sudden reveal could cause more damage, so maybe discrediting the sideshows, diluting the narratives and let the steam simmer down around Jake & Ant.

How do they achieve this? They allow stories to circulate that Nic is Jake’s beard and Luke is looking elsewhere. This creates a platform to disentangle your celeb from the adjacent with the least possible impact. Creating a clearer platform for Luke & Nic to move on.

Just a reminder of my earlier post ‘Sad News’, C-DAN reports insider industry gossip when it comes from more than one source. Some will be more accurate than others and facts open to interpretation. Don’t let this story rattle you too much. We wait and see.

Sad news

The breakdown of a marriage is always very sad and one hopes both have time to heal as they move on with their lives.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so those that are getting twitchy need some displacement activity. So to make themselves feel better they try and pick on what they perceive to be the weaker kid. Let’s go see if we can make Lukola spiral. Classic bullying behaviour of the playground variety.

Of course what they are saying could be true, but as it stands today, this minute, there is nothing to support these claims, and if there were why have they taken so long to reveal them!

I must confess to not having read any of it. A friend has given me the gist & suggested a rewatch of Luke’s People interview which I think may counter some of them.

Congratulations & Commiserations

Shame none of the Bridgerton cast or Nicola from Big Mood got nominated for an Emmy. Plenty more projects ahead for them.

As it’s quiet there seems to be this noise coming from the sideline of our group that is in a bit of a twitter, involving museums, polaroids and defending Luke or some such. It’s like many in this side group are spiralling over blinds, photos being upside down and photos of erotic art and that Jake’s friends have gone missing. Although I’m sure they will return. This group is rather amusing and slightly irritating. They seem to want to put these events at our door when all we are doing is observing them. They are adamant that Jake & Nic are loves young/old dream & they are on a unique journey. But it’s not unique.

This scenario has happened before. Nicola’s bid to get media attention and profile at the time of Derry Girls, an astute thing to do at the beginning of a career, was to suggest a possible relationship with a colleague Laurie Kynaston. Prevents press prying into reality, while still maintaining visibility.

There were many suggestions made to imply these two were starting/in a relationship. I believe even Camilla posted that they should do something about their connection. Or words to that effect. But it was all pantomime for attention and engagement while Nic was seeing a guy with yucky sheets, or some such. Person still unknown. Laurie is now in a committed relationship with his boyfriend. So Nic has previous on this kind of behaviour. It’s her MO to create a front of house, while her real life carries on behind. Even if the idea is reused to fulfil a contract. So our belief that Jake is not real is not just founded on what we see, but on past history.

So with this in mind, & being aware of today’s activity, they know pieces of jewellery catch our attention, because of the reaction to the ring from Galway. A necklace with a letter on it could be about anything and anyone. A pet name, her sister, his sister. Her great grandmother. It’s just before a job, so she wants attention and engagement to seem important. It’s just embarrassingly performative at this point. Just like a Poloroid on the back of a phone when a photo as wallpaper would do the job.

Woken up today quite puzzled over the direction of Nic’s media push this year. Why all these contradictions and possible own goals?

We’ve had the small inconsistencies about food, ie love pasta/don’t love pasta, and very knowledgable about her star sign but not really into star signs.

Had the slightly larger discrepancy of I don’t want to discuss my relationship on Dish, but chucked it about in The Guardian and allows her ‘bf’ to post endless proximity photos. So a small reference to Jake’s favourite condiment would hardly compromised herself if real.

Then we slip into the total paradox of her bigger themes and her advocacy. Her not wanting to be defined my a man had already dissolved in Cannes. Her body positive standing only to be disavowed as boring. Championing the LGBTQ+ community, then allegedly being a beard for one of the community, backed up by a cast member calling the young man a liar on the red carpet. Unless my information is wrong, this week, despite her strong support for Palastine, ends up on a promotional table of a company with strong ties to the current government of Palastine’s adversary. Maybe her new brand manager jumped at some distraction and did not do enough research, because if true, it’s an odd choice.

Also I don’t think C-DAN just posts anon statements. They tend to have some substance. And really all this blind says is what is patently obvious. He has been hidden, and in the last weeks he has not. There’s an implication in the post that this is by design. But no suggestion as to what end, so why all the panic!!! They really do need to calm down

‘Where did Nic go?’ I see people ask. With the exception of Choose Love & Jack’s tour her sm has seemed on pause. Why would that be?

Well, possibly a blind suggesting your relationship is a sham might stop you in your tracks; especially if true. Her projects are not getting the views she may have expected and so I’m told has recently lost approx 21k followers!

IMO it would cause any media team to slam on the brakes and review the chosen way forward. The narrative has not been doing as well as expected. Fun frolics with the KGC has had limited appeal and possibly alienated some. Especially if it is seen as fake and inauthentic. So meetings and 2 temperature stories were needed.

So the pause will last until they consider enough time has passed to either change the narrative, or reframe the narrative already used. Either way a restart could be tentative, hoping not to cause more damage. We shall see.

Wow, and I thought the Moet campaign looked bad!! 😂😂🤣😂

All this co-ordination to promote tacky places in Cyprus from a finsta account! Definitely trying to grab our attention away from the blinds; so is this self-sabotage or just straight forward sabotage!!

Last one out please take out the ……..